www.checkbiotech.org ; www.czu.cz ; www.raupp.info

Ten years after genetically engineered crops were first planted commercially
in the United States, Americans remain ill-informed about and uncomfortable
with biotech food, according to the fifth annual survey on the topic,
released December 2006.

People vastly underestimate how much gene-altered food they are already
consuming; lean toward wanting greater regulation of such crops; and have
less faith than ever that the Food and Drug Administration will provide
accurate information, the survey found.

The poll also confirmed that most Americans - particularly women - do not
like the idea of eating meat or milk from cloned animals - a view that
stands in contrast to scientific evidence that cloned food is safe. The FDA
recently said it is close to allowing such food on the market.

Overall, said Michael Fernandez, executive director of the Pew Initiative on
Food and Biotechnology, which sponsored the survey, Americans are "still
generally uncertain" about genetically modified and cloned foods.

In the five years since Pew began plumbing American attitudes toward
genetically engineered food, U.S. acreage in such crops has grown
substantially. Today, 89 percent of soybeans, 83 percent of cotton and 61
percent of corn is genetically engineered to resist weed-killing chemicals
or to help the plants make their own insecticides.

Since most processed foods contain at least small amounts of soy lecithin,
corn syrup or related ingredients, almost everyone in the United States has
consumed some amount of gene-altered food.

In this year's survey, conducted by the Mellman Group, only about
one-quarter of the 1,000 adults polled thought they had ever eaten
gene-altered food, an indication that Americans have "very little in-depth
knowledge of the topic," according to a Pew summary.

Support for marketing genetically modified food has remained flat since 2001
at 27 percent, with opposition dropping from 58 percent in 2001 to 46
percent this year.

The proportion of Americans who say they "don't know" if gene modified foods
are safe has shrunk since 2001, while the "safe" and "unsafe" camps grew by
about 5 percent each: 34 percent believe they are safe, and 29 percent say
they are not.

[www.heraldnet.com]

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