DS: I'm Dave Schmidt, I am the Senior Vice President of food safety and global relations with the International Food Information Council. We are a non-profit based in Washington, D.C., and our mission is to communicate science-based information, on food safety and nutrition, to those opinion leaders who we believe consumers are most likely to trust- those include educators, government officials, journalists, health care professionals, and others.

What does transgenic mean to you?

DS: The word transgenic, I think does imply technically moving genes from one organism to another for some improvement in that. I think that the term itself does conjure up some negative connotations with consumers who are not familiar with this technology- so, while I am familiar with it, we do have to be careful with the term transgenic. Terms such as food or agricultural biotechnology are probably better understood by more consumers by our research.

What is the potential impact of having transgenetic animals or plants on society?

DS: There are many potential benefits from the use of agricultural biotechnology for society. While we have not yet realized all these benefits, I think some of the immediate ones we are experiencing today are environmental benefits. The crops that we have, in terms of corn and soybeans, where soybeans for instance, about seven percent of soy in the U.S. is produced using biotechnology, and this has led to some real concrete reductions in the use of herbicides in growing these crops, and even the herbicides we are using now are more beneficial to the environment. Also, we are going to move in the future to the promise of the technology offering nutritional benefits, either enhanced nutritional profiles, such as adding vitamins, antioxidants, phytochemicals, to the products, and also we are going to start to see a combination of traits, where a plant won't just have one improvement, we may see these stacked traits that may include a series of environmental benefits. So over time, the potential is limitless, but through research we will be carefully implementing all of these benefits.

What is the American consumer saying about biotech foods?

DS: We at IFAC have been studying American consumer attitudes since the early 1990's, even before some of the products were approved, and we have done quantitative research since 1997 when Dolly the cloned sheep was the big story in biotechnology at that time. But since then, and through our most recent survey, in August of 2002, we have found that American consumers are largely positive about biotechnology, particularly when they understand the benefits. We know that the knowledge is quite broad, the awareness of biotechnology, but the awareness is not very deep. So we don't have an extremely well-informed public, but for instance, in our latest surveys, we have found that a vast majority of Americans do expect a benefit from biotechnology over the next five years, and when we ask about certain benefits, we find that reduced pesticide potential from biotechnology registers as number one. About seventy percent of consumers said they would purchase products produced by biotechnology if it led to reduced pesticide use.

If most scientists and regulators agree that transgenic foods do not pose any greater risk than conventional foods, then why are some people concerned?

DS: Well I think biotechnology is a concept that is not understood by many people overall, so depending on what terms are used to describe the technology and what benefits are conveyed, the consumers may react very differently. When more frightening terms are used, such as transgenics or GMO's or Genetically Modified are thrust out to a consumer who is not aware of this technology at all, they tend to think that this is something scary, and think this could lead to a negative product trait, as opposed to looking at it as a benefit, whereas talking about it in terms of agricultural biotechnology and food biotechnology, and conveying why the product is being changed if the product is being changed or improved in the first place, will lead to greater acceptance. So , I think this focus on communicating the benefits in terminology that the consumers can understand, will lead to greater acceptance among consumers.

Do you have any other related topics that you would like to address?

DS: Well, I think overall, with biotechnology that we have found through our consumer research, that among the most compelling benefits of this technology is the ability to feed hungry people around the world. While we can certainly argue that we might not need to increase yields in the U.S., certainly around the world, our population is increasing exponentially, and we're going to have to feed a population that may grow to 13 billion by the year 2050. So, we need technologies like biotechnology, not only to increase the quantity of the food, but to help the farmers grow food in places where it is not possible now because of high salt or dry conditions. So, we really need to keep exploring the potentials and apply the technology where it can be beneficial.