ABSTRACT
The United States has more than a decade of experience with commercially marketed, genetically modi‰ed (GM) horticultural and ‰eld crops and is the dominant player in GM crops. The ‰rst GM commercial crops were the Flavr-Savr tomato and the Russet Burbank New Leaf potato, both deregulated in 1994 and marketed commercially shortly thereafter. At about the same time, ‰eld crop varieties possessing “input traits” were also developed and ‰rst marketed commercially. GM papaya was developed by the public sector and successfully marketed a little later. Some of the economic issues facing biotech horticultural crops have been summarized.1,2
In this chapter, new experimental economic methods are described and used to assess consumer willingness to pay for food products that might be made with new transgenic and intragenic GM traits. Participants in my lab auctions are randomly
Early Development of GM Crops .......................................................................... 194 New Development of GM Vegetable Crops ........................................................... 197 Food Labels and Information ................................................................................. 198 Experiments Designed to Assess Consumer Willingness to Pay for GM Foods ...... 200 Experimental Evidence on Key Bid-Price Differences ..........................................204
