Consumer Perspectives on New Biotech Foods: Benefits, Risks, and Preferences

1. New Value-Added Biotech Foods: What Do Consumers Think and Want? Gregory Jaffe Director, Biotechnology Project Center for Science in the Public Interest September 16, 2003.

2. Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) • Food and nutrition consumer organization. • Nutrition Action Healthletter. • No government or industry funding.

3. CSPI’s Biotechnology Project • Purpose • Identifying benefits and risks • Establishing strong regulatory systems in US and abroad • Educating and informing the public • Positions • Current crops in US appear safe to eat and environmental risks are manageable • Some benefits from current crops • Future products need to be assessed individually • Regulatory systems in US and abroad need strengthening to address next generation of products

4. Consumers and Biotech Foods • Safe Food • Safe Environment • Personal Benefits • Education and Information • Truthfulness

5. Safe Food • New foods tested before marketed • Independent agency determination that food is safe • Mandatory regulatory system • Government oversight of companies marketing the new food • Equity in treatment of products

6. Safe Environment • Americans care about environment • Government needs to ensure that new biotech foods don’t harm environment

7. Personal Benefits • Maximize benefit while minimizing risk • First on personal level • Then on societal level • No activity is without any risk

8. Current Biotech Products • Bt cotton • Bt corn • Roundup Ready soybeans, corn, and canola • Virus resistant papayas and squash • Personal benefits to farmers and societal benefits (from environmental advantages)

9. What consumers would consider a benefit • Economic -- less costly food • Consumption traits – taste, look, etc… • Nutritional qualities – healthier foods • Greater variety – new foods • None of the biotech foods to date has any of these qualities.

10. Future Biotech Products • High lycopene tomatoes • High oleic oil • Fast growing salmon • Iron-rich rice • Allergin-free peanuts • Firmer fruit • ?????

11. Products consumers might want • Better tasting tomato • Melons that don’t rot so quickly • Corn Flakes that cost half the price • Inexpensive fruit • Ice cream without cholesterol

12. A disconnect • Developers are not listening to what consumers want? • Science cannot achieve what consumers would want? • What consumers want will not provide a sufficient rate of return for private companies? • Public sector is not working on consumer beneficial products?

13. The Bottom Line • Prediction: There will be no value-added biotech foods marketed in the US in next five years.

14. Education and Information • Need education on biotechnology • Need education on agriculture • Need education on the food we currently eat • Need information about the benefits of the biotech foods • Need to know which specific foods are biotech

15. Truthfulness (not misleading) • Claims must be standardized • What is “high”? • Need a baseline for comparison • How much above baseline – 1%, 5%, 100% • How much of value-added ingredient must be used? • Must you use all GE tomatoes? • How to ensure claims are valid? • Documentation, inspections, testing?

16. Gregory JaffeDirectorCSPI Biotechnology Project Website: www.cspinet.org/biotech/index.html E-mail address: gjaffe@cspinet.org