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GMO Poll Results (and More) - NYTimes.com

February 24, 2011, 3:53 pm

32 Comments

GMO Poll Results (and More)

By MARK BITTMAN

Clearly this is something Ill be writing about for years to come; emotions are high and many pro-GMO people are industry boosters in disguise. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but fake impartiality is obnoxious. There were two pieces in Forbes about my column. The more reasonable one categorized me as a foodie elite presumably not because I sometimes eat well but because I refuse to acknowledge that genetically engineered foods will save the world, which they will not (you might read this terrific piece by Christopher Cook in The Christian Science Monitor, about Monsantos business and its threat to food safety, and then remember that not all new developments are progressive) and a luddite (which is ridiculous, unless believing that not every bit of technology is world-saving makes you a luddite). The other was written by a member of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an organization whose slogan appears to be Free Markets and Limited Government, and which is a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition, whose Global Warming 101 page reads: Global warming may or may not be a problem. Man may or may not be driving it. This plus the fact that the so-called think tank has received funding from ExxonMobil (or is it MobilExxon?) shows you how seriously that should be taken. Meanwhile, as I wrote last week, although there has been almost no evidence that GE food is a direct public health problem, its a field in which Monsanto and others are having their way. I do believe we need to push our regulatory agencies to give approval to these new creations more grudgingly. But without further ado, lets go to the poll results. I invited you to share your feelings and thoughts, both here and on Facebook and Twitter, about genetically modified foods. To all of you who answered or commented in one place or another, thank you. Youll have to allow me a small margin of error for my counting, but unless I was off by hundreds of votes (and I wasnt) it seems that a large majority of you are in some way leery of GM foods or crops, or at least want them to be labeled. If you have a few minutes to spare, scroll through some of the comments; there are some great responses (from all sides), and certainly a discussion worth having (and continuing) as we see how the latest GMO decisions play out. In short, in last weeks blog poll, about 83 percent of you are bothered by the presence of GMOs in food; 89 percent want to see labeling of such foods, and about 85% percent would like to see stricter regulations; nearly three-fourths would buy less salmon if it were genetically engineered
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GMO Poll Results (and More) - NYTimes.com

(but this number is skewed by the large number of you who dont buy farm-raised salmon in the first place Im in that category or who eat no salmon at all). The Facebook and Twitter polls were similar: between 82 and 85 percent of those responding would choose not to buy foods with GMOs if they were so labeled. The details: NYT Blog: 1. Does it bother you that there are genetically engineered ingredients in most of the foods sold in American supermarkets? Yes: 618 No: 107 Maybe: 11 Need More Information: 9 2. Do you want the products that contain genetically engineered ingredients to be labeled Contains Genetically Engineered Ingredients? Yes: 664 No: 67 Maybe: 10 Need More Information: 5 3. Do you think that government agencies should enact stricter regulations for testing, growing, and marketing of GE crops and other products? Yes: 637 No: 62 Maybe: 23 Need More Information: 19 4. If genetically engineered salmon were to come on the market, it would not be labeled according to current policy and would therefore be indistinguishable (visually, at least) from other farm-raised salmon. Would this curb your overall purchasing of salmon? (Vote-Counters Note: Some of the people who answered No to this question said they already dont buy farmed salmon, or, for one reason or another, dont eat fish in the first place.)
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GMO Poll Results (and More) - NYTimes.com

Yes: 527 No: 154 Maybe: 38 Need More Information: 8 Facebook: Would you buy food with genetically modified ingredients if you knew they were in there? Yes: 48 No: 429 Maybe: 19 Need More Information: 24 T witter: Would you buy food with genetically modified ingredients if you knew they were in there? Yes: 31 No: 418 Maybe: 32 Need More Information: 12

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