(Hat tip to Elton Robinson at South East Farm Press)

The Consumers Union wanted to know what consumers felt about genetically engineered crops cross-pollinating with organic crops. So in early February, they conducted a poll. They called a thousand random people over the phone and asked them just two questions:

1. Do you buy organic food, such as produce, meat or dairy products? (Yes/No)

2. Please rate your concern with organic food crops that are contaminated by genetic engineering. Are you…

• Extremely concerned
• Very concerned
• Somewhat concerned
• Not concerned at all

Sounds like a pretty simple exercise. However, I question the use of the term “contaminated.” This is a loaded term, and assumes one of the things that they want people to believe – that organic agriculture should not include genetic engineering. This introduces a bias into the poll. For instance, if you asked these two similar and benign questions, you would get two different results:

A. Please rate your concern with organic food crops that cross-pollinate with hybrid crops.

B. Please rate your concern with organic food crops that are contaminated by pollen from hybrid crops.

Of course, hybrids are allowed in organic agriculture, but I’ll bet my backyard garden harvest for this entire year that if you ask these two questions the word ‘contaminated’ will have a measurable effect and cause people to answer that they are more concerned than they would be otherwise.

Ok, that issue aside, it is good that the Consumers Union did a poll such as this, because there hasn’t been very much research investigating what people really think about genetic engineering and organic agriculture, and there’s been some talk about it in numerous channels. So how concerned are consumers about this “contamination?”

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