Abstract
Food integrity and food technologies both generate public concerns. There is little research to show the interactions between those concerns in particular samples, especially in Canada. In this paper, data from two national online samples are used to examine an aggregate of food integrity concerns, genetic modification in food, and food nanotechnology concerns in the Canadian public. A variety of trust, health, environmental, and science attitude variables are used to help explain the concerns that vary across the population. In addition, the food integrity concerns are tested as explanatory variables in the technology concern models to establish whether there is a strong or weak link between the two. Tobit and ordered probit regressions are used to model the variables for each of the survey samples. Results are examined to see if they are consistent across surveys and also consistent with an earlier study that was done in Australia. The results suggest that trust in people and trust in a variety of agents within the food system are beliefs that ameliorate concerns about food integrity and the two technologies. However, trust in advocacy organizations appears to be related to higher concerns in each case. Fundamentally and similar to the earlier Australian study, positive scientific attitudes are a major determinant of reduced concerns about food integrity and the two technologies.
Highlights
Technology applications remain contentious in the food industry globally
For Tobit models, since there are limited to no censored values, the coefficients are the marginal effects of the explanatory variables on the expected value of the dependent variable [27]
The results confirm the findings of Mohr and Golley [1] that concerns about food integrity are directly related to more specific concerns about genetically modified (GM) and nanotechnology applications for food
Summary
Technology applications remain contentious in the food industry globally. sometimes public concerns about technology applied to food may impede the ability of the food system to enhance its integrity through innovation. There is a possibility that the existence of food integrity issues could be a reason for public concerns about the uses of technology related to food. Regardless of whether the factors that characterize concerns about food integrity are the same or different from the factors that characterize concerns about GM (nanotechnology), food technologies remain largely unexplored across time and across countries. Research in this area could inform food industry decision making about appropriate methods to enhance food integrity and about how much to focus on food integrity implications when introducing new technology applications
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