Gene-Edited Foods and the Public: The First Representative Survey Study of the United States

ABSTRACT

Recent gene editing tools and techniques continue to develop at a swift pace and gene-edited foods boast significant promise to create identifiable benefits for end-use consumers, although there are currently few publicly identifiable products in the commercial marketplace. While competing stakeholders are active in this space, few public-facing media stories have surfaced and there have been few studies of public opinion of gene-edited foods. This article reports findings of the first representative survey study of public opinion toward gene-edited foods in the United States. This work finds that Americans are divided on their perceptions of this new technology and provides robust and granular assessment and identification of socioeconomic and belief-based classifications to better describe the current state of public opinion in this area.

KEYWORDS:

• Gene-edited food
• public opinion
• survey
• gene editing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

This study’s data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research.