PERSPECTIVES
European consumers and GM-foods
A lecture presented at a session organised by the Biotechnology Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, 26 April, 2012

Rather than ask consumers via questionnaires and polls about their attitudes to GM-foods and if they would buy

them, the CONSUMERCHOICE study sought to determine whether European consumers actually did purchase

GM-labelled food products in those countries participating in the project in which they were on sale (the Czech

Republic, Poland, Spain and The Netherlands in this inquiry). The results showed (a) that indeed they did, and

(b) that what consumers said in questionnaires with respect to GM-foods was not a reliable guide to what they

did when buying their food supplies. A survey of the behaviour of Polish and UK citizens living in or visiting North

America revealed that they took little or no action to avoid the widespread use of (unlabelled) GM-products in

Canada and the United States.