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Wire Service: RTw (Reuters World Report)
Jul 15, 1999`Frankenfood' headlines scare public,
study shows
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
The drive to come up with a catchy\headline probably helped turn Europeans so strongly
against genetically modified foods, while Americans so far barely notice, researchers said
on Thursday.
They said the volume and intensity of news coverage of controversial
policies are often associated with an increase in public concern. But
governments had better act on the public's fears, regardless of their
source, the researchers said.
"The lesson for science, industry and governments is: ignore public
opinion at your peril," said George Gaskell, a professor of social
psychology at the London School of Economics.
Gaskell and colleagues analysed the differences in attitudes with
opinion surveys and studies of news coverage and government policies.
"Just the very volume of press coverage around a controversial policy
has been found elsewhere to be associated with increased public concern,"
Gaskell said in a telephone interview.
Coining terms such as "Frankenfoods" to describe new crops also helped
frighten people, said Gaskell, whose findings are reported in the journal
Science.
"It's the headlines and it's metaphors. The role of a metaphor
originally is to make the unfamiliar familiar. It tells you that something
is like something else," he added.
"But at some point the metaphor becomes more than just an association.
It becomes the thing."
Although terms such as "Frankenfood" appeared in U.S. and British
newspapers as early as 1992, the news coverage was much more intense in
Europe, Gaskell's team said.
Because of the level of the coverage, Gaskell said, people thought
genetically modified food must be a dangerous and important issue.
He said most "elite" media in Europe provided coverage of genetically
modified foods -- such as longer-lasting tomatoes -- that was fairly
positive. U.S. newspapers such as The Washington Post were, in fact,
slightly more negative, he said.
But then there was an explosion of European interest, marked perhaps
most by the controversy over Monsanto's Round Up Ready soybean, genetically
engineered to resist the herbicide of the same name.
"We think the rapid growth in press coverage in Europe from about 1992
is an indication to the public that there are some problems here, that
there are contested issues," Gaskell said.
Gaskell's team also surveyed Americans and Europeans on their
knowledge and attitudes.
"On a very simple test of basic biological knowledge there is not much
difference between the Europeans and the Americans," Gaskell said.
"But Europeans are ... much more likely to think that genetically
modified foods are adulterated in some way. They are much more likely to
think that if they eat genetically modified foods, their genes will be
changed," he added. "This is much less so in the minds of Americans."
Europeans also trust their governments less to keep them safe from any
dangers genetically foods might pose.
"I think Americans are, on the whole, much more optimistic about new
technologies than are Europeans," he said.
Gaskell said it was not clear why, but he would continue to study
people's attitudes. "It may be part of popular culture, it may be the
history of eugenics, it may be the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or
mad cow disease) crisis that hit Europe," he said.
Gaskell said governments had better act on these public fears. "Had
labeling been taken more seriously and the whole issue of segregation of
crops, one wonders whether the present crisis would be as severe as it is,"
Gaskell said.
Within five years virtually all U.S. agricultural exports will be
genetically modified or combined with bulk commodities that have been
altered, according to U.S. officials.
The debate over their safety threatens to worsen already strained
trade relations with the European Union. Some European consumer groups,
wary after a series of scares over tainted food, have called for a
moratorium on all genetically modified foods until more is known about
their long-term effects.
Earlier this week Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman warned U.S.
biotech and food companies to heed consumer concerns and adopt voluntary
labels for genetically modified products. |