In 2010, Thompson Reuters released a survey* (PDF) of public attitudes toward genetically engineered food in the US. They had several significant findings, some of which should be fairly obvious, but some are real eye-openers. The questions were straight-forward and the raw data was posted online, but there was a distinct lack of visual representations of these results. I thought we could all use a good look at some simple graphs that demonstrate facts that many studies have shown consistently over time – that there are more people who believe that GE crops are safe than not, while most people are still undecided. It also showed that most people say they would eat GE plant-based foods that are currently on the market.

Question number one asked people to self-report their understanding of GE food. While self-reporting has its own problems (Like people who say they completely understand GE foods yet don’t really know anything about them), it does provide some information about how aware different groups are about GE. The survey reports that 65% of people are aware that some foods in the store are genetically engineered, and high-income and highly-educated people are up in the 80s. As for the understanding of the concepts, check out these results:

Continue reading…