Members in the News: Brandon McFadden and Jayson Lusk

80 Percent of Americans Want to Label Food That Contains DNA

Katherine Mangu-Ward May. 24, 2016 3:25 pm

You might have heard that Americans overwhelmingly favor mandatory labeling for foods containing genetically modified ingredients. That's true, according to a new study: 84 percent of respondents said they support the labels.

Brandon McFadden and Jayson Lusk

But a nearly identical percentage—80 percent—in the same survey said they'd also like to see labels on food containing DNA.

Brandon McFadden and Jayson Lusk

DNA.

The study, published in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal last week, also found that 33 percent of respondents thought that non-GM tomatoes "did not contain genes" and 32 percent thought that "vegetables did not have DNA." So there's that.
University of Florida food economist Brandon R. McFadden and his co-author Jayson L. Lusk surveyed 1,000 American consumers and discovered that "consumers think they know more than they actually do about GM food." In fact, the authors say, "the findings question the usefulness of results from opinion polls as motivation for public policy surrounding GM food."

Read the entire article online: http://reason.com/blog/2016/05/24/80-percent-of-americans-want-to-label-fo