ACCORDING to a report appearing in the Birmingham Post (UK) on February 19, 2004, the Government’s consultation exercise on genetically-modified (GM) crops may have seriously over-estimated the scale of public opposition. The official report on the GM national exercise, conducted last summer concluded that more than four out of five people were against GM crops and that just two per cent would be prepared to eat GM foods.
However, a team of academics from Cardiff University, the University of East Anglia and the Institute of Food Research, said the project had been over-hasty, under-resourced and ‘flawed in a number of important respects’. It said its own findings suggested that many people had yet to make up their minds about GM crops. A Mori poll for the UEA found that while 36 per cent opposed GM food, 13 per cent supported it and 39 per cent were neither for nor against. Although 85 per cent agreed that not enough was known about the long-term effects on the health of GM food, 45 per cent thought GM crops could hold future benefits for consumers and 56 per cent thought they could help developing nations.
The results of their survey provide important complementary evidence suggesting that current UK ‘public opinion’ is not a unitary whole, but fragmented with considerable ambivalence co-existing alongside outright opposition,’ the report added. The report also indicated that the GM National exercise - which involved public meetings around the country - may have been damaged by the Government’s own actions. “We note that, whilst a difficult matter to judge, many actions and statements by Government around the time of the debate had the potential to undermine the credibility of the debate process,” it said.
‘This effect may go some way towards explaining widespread cynicism among both participants and the wider public about the likely impact of the debate on Government policy.’ While the report praised the “‘innovative” nature of the project, it said that most of the aims and objectives had been ‘conceptually unclear’ or difficult to measure ‘in any sensible manner’. In their view, the production of the final report was over-hasty and under-resourced, and featured a worrying analysis of the debate’s findings. The director of the research consortium, which produced the report, Professor Nick Pidgeon, said that despite the problems with GM National project, their own findings broadly mirrored a number of its key conclusions -particularly on the need for independent regulation.
In a related survey that I am carrying out in Kenya, results may give a totally different dimension on what the public feels about patenting and commercial use of GMOs.
This survey is vital because it will be tabled for discussion at the forthcoming Advanced Course on Bioethics and Public Perceptions of Biotechnology 28 March - 7 April 2004, St Edmund Hall, Oxford University, UK. The course which organized by the European Federation of Biotechnology, is designed to provide the theory and skills necessary for effective interactive communication in biotechnology.
The workshop is targeted at PhD students, post-graduates and lecturers in research institutes and companies from throughout Europe and the Accession Countries.

Fredrick O.Otswong’o,
Nairobi