Genetically modified organic (GMO) foods are a debated topic in the food and consumer industry. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA ) has run tests on these GMOs and have concluded that they are unlikely to present risks on human health. They have passed all safety assessments.
Presently, AquaBounty Technologies, which is a company in Maynard, Massachusetts, has developed a GMO salmon that has sold product to customers in Canada. Now they want to make the move to the market in the U.S. but it is about how consumers would react to it.
Their discovery was very risky, this is considering that it almost put them out of business on several occasions. They started in 1989, where scientists gave a growth hormone gene from the Chinook salmon and gave it to the ocean pout allowing the fish to have a continuous low level of growth hormone.
In the table talk discussing this topic, I felt like one thing that effects consumer acceptance in not only GMO fish but other GMO products would be ignorance. I feel like we as Americans are hesitant to try new things because to the average person they may feel like scientists are tampering with their food. For example, in the article, Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski called AquaBounty’s salmon “fake fish”. Not only can this hurt the product, but Americans will continue to be fickle about trying the product.
Also, we had a debate on whether or not GMO products should be labeled as such or not. I said that they should but also should have a difference in price between hem and their non-GMO counterpart. I feel like being honest with what is going on with food is how they will get the consumer’s trust.
I agree with you that the reason that a lot of people are afraid of GMOs is because it is a relatively new thing and that they don’t know what kind of effects it will have on them. I think that labeling definitively affects consumer choice. For example, a lot of people are more likely to buy something that has “natural products”. But if you think about it, a lot of bad things are natural. For example, poison ivy is natural, and so are all bacteria and viruses. For the most part, no one created these things in a lab somewhere. I think that we need to be more mindful of what labels really mean when we are deciding what to buy.