Shoppers wary of GM - if they read labels

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter

New research shows that food companies will have to cut their prices if they want to sell genetically modified food in Europe - if consumers bother to read the labels.

Professor Bernard Ruffieux, of France's Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, has found that more than three-quarters of a typical sample of French consumers would either refuse to buy, or want to pay less for, a packet of biscuits containing genetically modified soy.

Just over a third (35 per cent) would refuse to buy it at all.

Slightly more people (42 per cent) would still buy it, but only if the price was, on average, 28 per cent lower than the equivalent biscuits without the GM soy.

However, in another experiment with chocolate bars, he found that 98 per cent of consumers did not notice the small print on the packet that said the product had been genetically modified until he told them.

Professor Ruffieux told an economics department seminar at Auckland University last week that his survey showed big gaps between people's political opinions - overwhelmingly against GM - and their behaviour as consumers.

He tested their behaviour by giving them money and asking them to bid in an auction for various food products. All bids were secret and the food was sold to the highest bidder at the price offered by the second-highest bidder.

He held one auction for five different chocolate bars that he put in front of each person on a plate without their packets.

Then he held another auction for them in their packets, allowing time for people to inspect the packaging.

The average bid for the one bar that contained genetically modified maize dropped just 2 per cent.

But in the third auction, he asked people to read the ingredients on the packets, and showed the ingredients in larger type on a screen. The average bid for the GM chocolate bar dropped 34 per cent.

"The major conclusion is that people just don't read," he said.

In the biscuit experiment, Professor Ruffieux was surprised that only 34 per cent refused to bid at all for the biscuits containing GM soy.

As well as the 42 per cent who were willing to buy the GM biscuits at a lower price, another 18 per cent bid exactly the same for the GM biscuits as for non-GM ones.

Five per cent of consumers - the "biotechnology enthusiasts" - actually bid higher prices for the GM biscuits.

The experiment also offered people "GMO-free" biscuits.

This time 49 per cent of consumers raised their bids, by an average of 22 per cent. A further 42 per cent left their bids unchanged, and 8 per cent lowered them.

In a forthcoming paper in the Economic Journal, Professor Ruffieux and two colleagues will say that their results argue against a complete ban on GM, but in favour of compulsory labelling.

A complete ban would deprive consumers who were willing to buy GM foods. But without labels, those against GM foods would not have the chance to boycott them.



Labelling in NZ

All foods containing any GM material must be labelled, and foods with altered characteristics from a GM process must also be labelled.

There is no provision for "may contain" labelling.

Two exceptions to the labelling requirements are:

- Where GM flavouring is present at less than 0.1 per cent of the food.

- Where GM food or ingredients are present unintentionally at less than 1 per cent of the food or ingredient (for example, GM material present via contamination).

Source: Ministry of Health