Risks and benefits of genetically modified foods

Abstract

There are claims that fear towards new technology has been caused by the lack of information and education on the subject to the public. Modern biotechnology and its applications have been receiving the same criticism. Thus, the objective of this study is to analyze the trends and coverage of genetically modified food (GMF) related issues available in an online database. In order to achieve this, GMFrelated articles (n = 60) were retrieved from a database, Science Direct, from the year 2005 until 2010. These articles were then analyzed using the annotated bibliography and content analysis techniques. It was found that the highest number of articles was in the ’Technical/Progress’ theme with 22 counts followed by the ‘Attitude’ theme with 13 counts. Meanwhile, the ‘Social Risks and/or Benefits’ theme was the lowest with only 1 paper identified. This trend shows that the focus of the majority of papers published were on the progress of GMF technology followed by attitude studies (such as perceptions and willingness to buy) and only a few were discussing the risk and benefit aspects of GMF. These findings are useful in giving us an insight of what have been discussed on GMF in the existing literature.

Key words: Genetically modified food (GMF), themes, risks and benefits, content analysis, biotechnology.