16 Oct - There are at least 69 grocery products on sale in Europe labelled as containing genetically modified ingredients. That is one of the conclusions of an EU-funded study(1) across ten European markets published this week.
Although the number and range of such products is limited, the study shows that, where they are available, consumers buy them. Some people who buy GM-labelled products say they do not buy them while others think they buy them when in fact they do not.
In September 2003, EU Regulation 1829/2003(2) came into force requiring the labelling of GM derived ingredients in foodstuffs. The present study, entitled Do European Consumers Buy GM Foods? (“CONSUMERCHOICE”), explored whether consumers buy GM-labelled products when presented with them in the familiar commercial environment of a supermarket or corner grocery store.
Over the past decade there have been many opinion polls asking what consumers would do if presented with the opportunity to buy products containing GM ingredients. By contrast, the two-year CONSUMERCHOICE study set out to find how consumers actually behave in ten European markets - the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Germany, The Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK.
In two of the ten markets – Greece and Slovenia – no GM-labelled products are on sale. Most of the GM-labelled products on sale in the remaining eight markets are cooking oils and margarines derived from GM-soya but other products on offer include popcorn, fish fingers, crisps, crackers, mayonnaise and chocolate bars. A brand of GM beer is on sale in some Swedish restaurants.
As required by law, GM declarations are made on the backs of packs in the ingredients panels. Typical declarations are “Containing GMO” and “made from genetically modified soya”.
The use of the “GM-free” label is most common in Germany, Poland and Sweden; it is prohibited in The Netherlands. In other countries more circumlocutory declarations are often made: for example, “does not contain GM raw material”. A total of 185 products labelled in this way were identified in the study, mostly derived from soybeans.
The greatest variety of GM-labelled products were offered in the Czech Republic (27 products), followed by the Netherlands (18), Estonia (13), Spain (6) the UK (3), Poland (1) and Germany (1). Sweden, Greece and Slovenia offered no GM-labelled products for sale in grocery stores.
An analysis conducted in January 2008 of the actual and claimed shopping behaviour of 41,000 consumers in five of the markets which sell GM-labelled products shows that almost 13.7 per cent of shoppers in the Czech Republic, 11 percent in The Netherlands, 2.7 percent in Poland and 2 percent in Spain had bought a product labelled as containing GM in the preceding twelve months (3). Although there are three GM labelled products on sale in the UK, none of these was picked up in the analysis.
Twenty per cent of consumers who bought GM-labelled products in the previous 12 months were aware that they bought them. However, 48 per cent of people who bought GM labelled products thought that they had not bought them, indicating that some consumers either did not read the labels sufficiently closely, did not understand them or did not, in fact, care whether or not they bought GM-labelled products. Thirty per cent of consumers who bought GM labelled products did not know whether or not they had bought them.
“This study reveals that, whatever people say in opinion polls, most do not actively avoid GM foods in the grocery stores,” said Professor Vivian Moses of Kings College London, co-ordinator for the project.
Three-quarters of all consumers in the study claimed to know that products which contain GM ingredients have to be labelled by law but 60 per cent said they did not know how to distinguish a GM product pack from a conventional one. That may reflect the fact that fewer than half the respondents in the study said they read labels before buying products. Only one in five said that they actively avoided buying GM products.
“Whilst it has not been possible to obtain detailed sales data for the GM-labelled products we identified, what we can say is that these products continue to be offered for sale despite the pressure for shelf space,” said Professor Moses. “Retailers must therefore consider them to be worth stocking and consumers must buy them in sufficient quantities to meet commercial requirements.”
Focus groups were held in seven countries to explore in depth the current state of consumer sentiment towards GM foods. Those discussions suggest that the GM issue is no longer a hot topic for most consumers. Whilst labelling of GM foods was indeed demanded by the participants, few said that they actually looked at labels when making purchases.