Iama World Food and Agribusiness Forum

Based on survey data collected on a sample of 500 Italian consumers, this paper evaluates the consumer's attitude towards foods obtained from the application of biotechnologies and foods labeled as " GM free ". Results from the application of probit models shows that the probability to purchase GM products is lower for individuals more adverse to risk, older, with higher education and less confident in institutional guarantees. Willingness to Pay for GM free products is positively related to information, risk aversion, age, trust in institutional environment, negatively to the degree of agreement with the application of biotechnologies. 3 Introduction The cultivation of biotech crops is continuously expanding worldwide. According to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), 58.7 million hectares were planted with Genetically Modified (GM) crops in 2002, an increase of 12% over the previous year. United States (66.4%), Argentina (23.0%), Canada (6.0%) and China (2.1%) have the largest world share of transgenic crops. Also new countries are emerging: in 2002, India, Colombia and Honduras grew biotech crops for the first time. The development of biotechnologies in the agricultural sector and in the food industry has offered the opportunity to increase crop and animal productions, to decrease production costs and to improve food quality and food safety, but on the other hand poses the important problem of their acceptance by consumers. In a previous study for Italy, Boccaletti and Moro (2000) showed that consumers had a low degree of knowledge of the issue, but an overall positive attitude towards GM foods. However, recent food crisis in Europe, such as " mad cow " or " dioxin chicken " , as well as the generally more negative attitude versus biotechnologies recognised to European consumers if compared for example to American consumers (Hoban, 1997), contribute to decrease consumer's trust in science and public institutions and to increase the coverage of media on food safety problems. Moreover, as a response to public concern about food safety, the European Union (EU) regulation requires labeling of foods as GM when containing more than 1% of GM ingredients (Regulations 49/2000/EC and 50/2000/EC of 10 January 2000). This is in line with a precautionary approach that led the EU to formally ban the approval and commercialization of new GM products in Europe (Sheldon, 2002) 1. Also some agribusiness firms and retail chains decided to voluntary label their products as " GM free " …