Now, perhaps more than at any other time in history, food producers are faced with the challenge of pleasing a discriminating, fastidious consumer base. Shoppers are asking questions en masse that growers and processors have never before had to answer: Who made this? Where was it made? What’s in it? What’s the carbon footprint of producing it?
At the forefront of the conversation is biotechnology and its role in food production. Simplot’s genetically modified Innate potatoes have made waves with their USDA approval for consumption and the subsequent debate about their suitability for consumption. Ballot initiatives regarding GMO labeling in Oregon and Colorado made national news headlines during this past fall’s election cycle. Like it or not, this drama is playing out before our very eyes.
The Council for Biotechnology Information (CBI) and its partner organization, the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) have made it their mission to insert themselves into that conversation, giving a reasonable, sensible voice to the biotech industry that, until relatively recently, simply wasn’t being heard. Since its introduction in the early 1980s, biotechnology has been accepted and even embraced in areas such as medicine and industrial and environmental work. However, this has not been the case in the food and agriculture sector.
“I think, largely, it has to do with the relationship people have with their food,” says Dr. Cathleen Enright, executive vice president of the BIO’s food and agriculture section and CBI executive director, referring to consumer skepticism of bio-engineered food. “We know from our survey work that American consumers are just changing how they view food—health, convenience nutrition, society. It’s all changing”
A big reason for those changes, in Enright’s mind, has been the rise of social media. People’s questions are certainly being answered online, and narratives have been shaped by these conversations, however unqualified the sources may be. Many groups (for purposes of this article, those opposed to the use of biotechnology, particularly GMOs) have been active and adept at creating and guiding the dialogue in a direction that suits their respective agendas.
Admittedly, Enright says, the food and ag industry has been slow to join the conversation. “I think there was a perceived risk in engaging in an environment that was unfamiliar or where the outcome was uncertain,” she says. “From our perspective, the regulatory process based on science to look at evaluations had worked and still works. So when folks were raising false assertions about health or safety, I think the environment was just saying, ‘Don’t go there.’ And there was also the trust that the science would prevail.”
Yet, for years, no matter what the science said, a loud and vocal faction made it known that much of the public distrusted genetically modified food products. So, in 2013, CBI launched GMOAnswers, a website dedicated to answering as transparently as humanly possible the public’s questions about the technology. Prior to the creation of GMOAnswers, the GMO-friendly crowd had little to no voice in the public conversation. But just over a year in, some 900 questions have been posted to the site, and the commitment to transparency has been a welcome change, says Enright.
“We really did not have a GMO presence,” she says. “Now, we have seen positive media coverage in general about GM. Our story is always told. The other side’s story may also be told, but our side is always told and told accurately, and it did not used to be that way.”
The group of 115 third-party experts who answer questions on GMOAnswers is diverse—healthcare professionals, academicians, food safety experts, dieticians, farmers and others. These experts volunteer their time and have their names and faces attached to their respective answers on the site, lending an air of humanity to the issues.
“We don’t care how loaded a question is,” says Enright. “We’re going to answer everything. They submit a question, commentary takes place on the site, we don’t edit the commentary, the response is provided, and then there’s more commentary. That has been an incredible credibility tool with our stakeholders, policymakers and others, including media. We don’t filter the conversation. The enabling of the conversation—a real snapshot of the debate that’s going on—has provided our effort with a lot of credibility.”
While the debate over GMOs and other uses of biotechnology in production agriculture is far from over, GMOAnswers represents a paradigm shift among producers and processors—a shift that welcomes open, honest dialogue from one end of the supply chain to the other. And this new philosophy is pointing to greener pastures for the use of biotechnology in agriculture.
“I think that the needle is definitely moving in a direction where people are more aware of the truth and of the facts about the technology,” says Enright.