Background
The broadness of biotechnology serves to connect different types of modern plant breeding techniques with the potential to improve global food security. However, the topic goes beyond the specific example consumers’ associate with the term—genetic modification. As a result, it is often unclear if consumers really know what they claim to understand and the efforts to clarify the science and reasoning behind the use of these practices is often obscured.
Methods
Two online surveys of 500 Canadians were conducted in 2017.
Results
Three-quarters of Canadians have high levels of trust in those who provide information about food, yet two-thirds believe that modern plant breeding technologies are unnatural.
Conclusions
Canadians lack basic knowledge about modern plant breeding practices and technologies and possess high levels of uncertainty regarding the potential for benefits or externalities to develop from the commercialization of new genome editing plant breeding technologies.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.