Americans say stop planting gene-altered
crops
Brad Dorfman / Reuters 6nov00
| 54.4 percent of respondents concerned about the recalls
because it raised questions about the food supply.
Nearly 60 percent of women surveyed expressed concern. |
|
Some 1,210 adults were polled this week about their reactions to the recall of taco shells and other foods tainted with ingredients containing corn not approved for human consumption. The corn, a variety of seed called StarLink made by European pharmaceuticals giant Aventis SA, was not approved because of concern it could provoke allergic reactions.
The survey found 54.4 percent of respondents concerned about the recalls because it raised questions about the food supply. Nearly 60 percent of women surveyed expressed concern.
Only 24.9 percent said they were not concerned about it. Seventeen percent said they had not heard about the recalls, which have been widely publicised in the press.
The controversial StarLink variety accounted for only about one percent of US corn plantings this year, but the corn has been mixed with other varieties, spawning chaos in the food chain from farmers to food companies and costing millions of dollars.
Fully a third of those surveyed, 33.3 percent, said that farmers should not be allowed to plant gene modified crops. Some 39.2 percent said that farmers should be able to plant them and 19.7 percent said they were not sure.
"I really think that farmers should not be allowed to grow it," said Sandy Farris, a 43-year-old marketing coordinator for a water and waste operations management company in Houston, and one of those surveyed.
She said she was concerned that genetically modified foods might be sold without being identified as such to consumers.
"I really don't think that their quality assurance is that great," said Farris, who has four children ages 7 to 24.
The question of whether genetically modified crops should be allowed into the food chain was put in sharp focus in late September when Philip Morris Cos. unit Kraft Food voluntarily recalled Taco Bell taco shells from store shelves after a gene-modified corn called StarLink was discovered in them.
Since then nearly 300 kinds of taco shells, tortillas, chips and tostadas had been recalled from US grocery stores and restaurants because of suspected contamination with a biotech corn.
The StarLink corn, produced by European pharmaceutical giant Aventis SA , has been approved as animal feed but not for human consumption.
Even some food companies say the government should not approve foods for animals and not humans.
"I think that what's happened in the StarLink case is that they're probably a little bit hard to control, once they are in the system," C. Steven McMillan, president and chief executive of Sara Lee Corp. , said after the food and consumer product company's annual meeting last week.
Most food makers have had shareholder proposals this year calling for the companies to stop using gene-modified ingredients. Those proposals have been soundly defeated.
The survey found a significant gender gap in responses on gene-modified foods. A majority of men, 51.2 percent, said farmers should be allowed to plant gene-modified crops while 43.2 percent of women were opposed.
"I just feel that genetically modified products are probably in the long run going to be healthful," William Brucker, 65, a retired insurance agent from Kenmore, N.Y., a suburb of Buffalo, said. "You live long enough and you hear so much of this scare stuff and they find out that they're OK. You take it with a grain of salt."
The poll has a margin of error of three percentage points.
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