The National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard of 2016: Intersection of Technology and Public Understanding of Science in the United States

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overall, it is a piece of good information on the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard of the USA.

Minor comments

1. Title: Include ‘ the United States to make it clear (e.g., The US National Bioengineered…)

2. Page 11, line 423. Change ‘>0.09’ to ‘>0.9’

3. It would be helpful if a brief comment is provided about the EU consumers vs. US consumers in terms of bioengineered crops/foods. It looks that the US consumers are not as antagonistic as the EU towards genetically engineered crops. 

4. A comment about the reading of the bioengineered label will be helpful or provide a reference (if possible). Do US consumers really care about the labels?

Author Response

We thank Reviewer 1 for their helpful suggestions. A summary of the changes we have made in response are as follows: 

Overall, it is a piece of good information on the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard of the USA.

Minor comments

Title: Include ‘ the United States to make it clear (e.g., The US National Bioengineered…)

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We agree, and this has been added. The title now reads “The National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard of 2016: Intersection of Technology and Public Understanding of Science in the United States.

Page 11, line 423. Change ‘>0.09’ to ‘>0.9’

Response: Thank you for catching this error. This figure has been updated.

It would be helpful if a brief comment is provided about the EU consumers vs. US consumers in terms of bioengineered crops/foods. It looks that the US consumers are not as antagonistic as the EU towards genetically engineered crops. 

Response: We agree. We’ve added a reference to EU consumers in the discussion section in relation to opportunities for future research (lines 643-644).

A comment about the reading of the bioengineered label will be helpful or provide a reference (if possible). Do US consumers really care about the labels?

Response: Reference to the influence of food labels on consumer behavior, and a note regarding the likelihood of US consumers reading GM labels (including citation), has been added to the discussion section (lines 631-634)

Reviewer 2 Report

Is an interesting research, but it have to be improved before publication.

1. all the blank lines (I marked it in text) have to be deleted

2. the table is divided on 2 pages, without the indicates on the second page 

3. How exactly was the sample determined? What are the criteria by which certain study participants were recruited? It is specified what is the structure of the sample, but not how it was established, what was the method and rationale for choosing the responding participants.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for their insightful and helpful feedback. A summary of our modifications and/or response to reviewer comments are as follows:

Is an interesting research, but it have to be improved before publication.

All the blank lines (I marked it in text) have to be deleted

Response: Thank you. We have removed the lines as indicated in-text.

The table is divided on 2 pages, without the indicates on the second page 

Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We’ve added a second header (“Table 2 Continued”) and copied the indicates to Table 2 on the second page of Table 2.  

3. How exactly was the sample determined? What are the criteria by which certain study participants were recruited? It is specified what is the structure of the sample, but not how it was established, what was the method and rationale for choosing the responding participants.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We’ve added additional details regarding participant recruitment procedures in the “Study 2: Participants” section (lines 355-358). Specifically, we clarify: “In line with our use of a Qualtrics survey panel, the population from which we recruited included those living in the United States, 18 years of age or older, who had previously agreed to participate in survey research either with Qualtrics of one of their contracted partners.” Because this study was an experiment (and not intended to be a representative panel of the US population), we did not have any additional participant parameters regarding eligibility and recruitment (aside from the experimental condition quotas noted in text) beyond living in the United States and being at least 18 years of age.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for their insightful and helpful feedback. A summary of our modifications and/or response to reviewer comments are as follows:

I will preface that I am not a sociologist and some of what I say reflects those differences. As an example, in line 265, you use the word, “manipulation”. If this choice of words is not consistent with your discipline, what you are doing is a different in “treatment” to determine differences.

Response: The term “manipulation” is standard vocabulary in many social sciences. The primary author is coming from the field of Communication, which uses that term to describe what is being changed between experimental conditions.

The more I reflect on your manuscript, the more I see a disconnect between the NBFDS and what you did. Your focus is more on SmartLabel than it is the NBFDS. Adoption of SmartLabel was certainly sped up due to the passing of the NBFDS, but you seem to be more interested in how companies label products and what this conveys in consumers’ minds. I think this has merit, but you may need to reframe your discussion without altering the results/implications of what you found.

Response: We understand this apparent disconnect. At the time Study 1 was conducted (our content analysis) in 2016, NBFDS was being passed and SmartLabel was one of the only platforms already established for companies to digitally disclose ingredients. We would like to keep our discussion of NBFDS, as we think our results relate directly to corporate disclosure of GM ingredients, which was made mandatory by NBFDS and provides important context for the utility of our study results.

Another of my primary concerns with your manuscript is how little you discuss or reference the benefits of bioengineered food products until the very end. This should be stated at the beginning of your manuscript. If science consistently points to the fact that bioengineered food products are safe, then why not mention this at the beginning of your manuscript to further motivate the need for your research? This indicates the disconnect between what science has discovered regarding the relative safety of these food products and what consumers know/believe. These differences result in the need for the NBFDS to facilitate consumers’ confidence in the U.S. food supply. I still don’t understand why I have to wait to midway through page five before the benefits of bioengineered food products are clearly discussed or referenced.

Response: Thank you for this important point, we agree. It was not our intention to avoid a discussion of GM benefits. We have added reference to the benefits of GM crops to the introduction of the manuscript (lines 41-43, 46).

 At risk of belaboring my point in the previous paragraph, do scientists not have a responsibility to be inclusive of advantages/disadvantages of new technologies that may be contentious? The lack of discussion of the benefits of bioengineered products early in your manuscript leaves this reviewer wondering if you have done due diligence in understanding your research topic. Given your discussion late in the manuscript (results and discussion), you have, but it’s not clear initially.

Response: We hope the addition of text regarding the benefits of GM foods within the introduction, paired with the existing discussion of benefits elsewhere in the manuscript, is sufficient in addressing this concern.

Throughout your manuscript, you routinely use the word, “they”, but it’s unclear on who you are referring to. This can be in relation to a reference in the previous sentence, but you have multiple references in the previous sentence. There are other instances (results or discussion) where there’s no clarity on who you are referring to.

Response: Thank you for this point. We have gone through every instance of “they” and either updated our language and/or clarified who we are referring to when it is unclear. These changes have been made on lines 49, 56, 63, 119, 137, 182, 191, 206, 467, 474, 553, 613, and 616. The use of the term “they” in the methods, results, and discussion sections that were not modified or removed are referring to participants.

I’m not familiar with whether it’s typical to include a conclusion in sociology journals, but I think your manuscript would be improved with a summary of your problem, results, discussion, and limitations. Some of this is already present, but tying these ideas together would improve what you have already done.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We summarize the problem (lines 548-549), methods (lines 549-552; 555-557), results (lines 557-574), implications (lines 575-634), and limitations/future research (lines 635-658) in the discussion section. To reduce manuscript length and meet length requirements, we opted to not include a concluding paragraph.

Your reference list does not match what you cite in-text. I may have missed the citations in-text, but I couldn’t find [50]-[52] and [54]-[55].

Response: This may have been a result of a glitch in our reference management system. References 50-52 are contained in footnote #1, and references 54-55 are on lines 491 and 492. We have gone through the rest of the references and corrected other errors as well.

For your tables, I encourage you to consider putting goodness of fit and number of observations in the table so readers can glean all information from the table without looking at the rest of the table (i.e., make them stand-alone).

Response: We agree. We’ve added number of observations for each experimental condition in Table 1 and goodness of fit statistics for our regression models (using R Square) into Table 3.

Specific comments

Line 51 – Which study do you mean by “they” from the previous sentence?  

Response: a citation has been added to clarify this sentence.

Line 57 – Is there a reason you didn’t include the first names of both elected individuals? At the time of the announcement, both of the officials you name were in the Senate, not House of Representatives. I believe you are referring to Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas. Additionally, I don’t understand why who announced the standard being finalized is more important than the person who co-sponsored/authored the bill.

Response: We have removed reference to both elected officials for clarity and brevity.

Line 76 – remove “also” at the end of this line.

Response: “also” has been removed.

Line 77 – Can you reword the sentence that begins, “In effect…”? This sentence lacks clarity.

Response: Given that this sentence repeats information already provided at the top of the paragraph, we elected to removed this statement entirely to avoid confusion.   

Line 81 – This paragraph highlights how slow the law is to keep pace with advances in science. Since the bill was passed, CRISPR technologies have become more widespread. You also seem to ignore that private companies’ standards can exceed the bare minimum in laws. Do you think restaurants have lower standards than the law?

Response: We certainly agree that private companies’ standards can exceed the minimum requirements set by law. This has been added in-text to make that possibility explicit.

Line 130 – I’m not sure what you are saying in the sentence that begins with, “Despite appearing…” Are you arguing for a standardized clearing house? I’m aware that you are referencing previous research, but why are you including this sentence?

Response: We understand this sentence may cause more confusion with little benefit. Our intention was to explain how SmartLabel works, but we agree that it is not vital to include. As such, this sentence has been removed for clarity.

Line 140 – Do you have more updated information? This seems to be outdated and behind advances that technology allows and how food companies have altered business practices. Remember laws create a different set of incentives that businesses must adapt to. It might be useful to provide a comparison of how what was projected compares to the current situation to keep your manuscript timely/relevant.

Response: We agree. We have updated information and have added that information to the manuscript (lines 162-163),

Line 165 – But if those products include, GMO-free water, can we take the Non-GMO project seriously? The ability to differentiate to attract consumers is a positive, but we need to be aware that there are products out there like water and cat litter which are labeled as GMO-free when they don’t contain DNA in the first place and can create consumer concern when not fully justified.

Response: We completely agree. We do not intend this paragraph to imply that the Non-GMO project should or should not be taken seriously. Our intention with this text is to highlight the market utility of such labels (regardless of scientific accuracy), which increases GM labeling visibility to consumers.

Line 174 – You need a reference for this sentence as it is currently written.

Response: This line was removed (per the comment below), so no citation was added.

Line 175 – This paragraph seems to be largely repeating yourself from earlier in your manuscript.

Response: We agree. We have removed this paragraph.

Line 263 – Who is your respondent pool? Your manuscript never fully describes how you determined who would be sent the questionnaire. It also seems to me that you should introduce all facts about your respondent pool in one area instead of two different sections (line 263 and then line 311).

Response: This point is well taken. Line 263 is describing experimental design and how participants were assigned, not participants themselves. We’ve added additional details regarding participant recruitment procedures in the “Study 2: Participants” section (lines355-358). Specifically, we clarify: “In line with our use of a Qualtrics survey panel, the population from which we recruited included those living in the United States, 18 years of age or older, who had previously agreed to participate in survey research either with Qualtrics of one of their contracted partners.” Because this study was an experiment (and not intended to be a representative panel of the US population), we did not have any additional participant parameters regarding eligibility and recruitment (aside from the experimental condition quotas noted in text) beyond living in the United States and being at least 18 years of age.

Line 321 – What was the order you asked the questions? Did you address costs and then benefits, or the reverse? This is not clear and can definitely impact your results. This is not listed as a potential limitation of your research.

Response: Risk and benefit items were randomized to avoid priming. This detail has been added in-text (lines 386-387).

Line 324 – This paragraph again ignores the potential benefits of bioengineered crops to the environment that are not limited to reduced fuel usage and application of herbicides/pesticides. – We understand that these scale items are limited to a select set of benefits to GM food. Unfortunately, the scale items used in this study cannot be updated.

Line 324 – Why do you use a 7 point Likert scale? Dillman discusses this has negative tradeoffs depending on respondents’ knowledge of the subject. Your manuscript also does not include what the rating scale was (i.e., strongly agree, agree, neutral, etc.).

Response: We opted for a 7-point scale for perceived risks to allow for more flexibility in participant response. Details regarding the likelihood rating scale used has been added (lines 374-376; 383-384), as has the agreement scale used for the morality assessment variable (lines 418-420).

Line 341 – Your manuscript does not state why you use a 7 point scale in some questions and a 5 point scale in others. Please clarify.

Response: This is an important point. Because we used scales from multiple sources with varying scale options, our scale options varied. However, all items that were combined into a single index used the same measurement level, and they were then entered into a standardized regression model. A note about the varying measurement levels and how we corrected for them (via standardization in our regression model) is included in Footnote #2 on page 12.  

Line 361 – Why are you not including all statements used in your research? You could add an additional table or appendix.

Response: Given the extensive word count of the manuscript, we summarized our questions in this way to save space. We have added all items back into the manuscript for objective knowledge (lines 395-407) and moral assessment (lines 420-431) variables.

Line 400 – You are justified to use both safety and risk. Those are two different concepts, especially as it relates to food in my opinion. You do a good job addressing the difference.

Response: Thank you.

Line 407 – I’m unsure why you include the sentence that starts at the end of this line, “By contrast…”

Response: We intended to point out that there were characterizations present that could be arguably conceived as negative, in contrast to the largely positive descriptors listed in the rest of the paragraph.

Line 421 – You have (FDA, 2015) as an in-text citation, but I’m not sure which numbered reference that corresponds with.

Response: Thank you for catching this. This was an oversight in our citation management system. This reference has been corrected.  

Line 422 – Given your focus on the NBFDS, I’m unclear as why what the EU is doing is relevant. This comparison also occurs earlier in your manuscript.

Response: We included the EU standards to provide important global context regarding GM labeling.

Line 462 – Change “self-report” to “self-reported”.

Response: This change has been made.

Line 473 – How does this compare to the general scientific literature?

Response: This is an interesting question. Given the low rates of consumption of scientific literature of the non-scientific public (and the inaccessibility of such literature), we imagine that food labels will be a more frequently viewed source of information about GM technology.

Line 519 – Why do you say, “risks and benefits”? Is this the manner in which you posed these type of questions to your respondents? Does possibly influence your results? This concern continues throughout the rest of this paragraph.

Response: We use the term “risks and benefits” as we measured both perceived risks and perceived benefits in Study 2. Additional details regarding the survey questions used to measure these constructs has been added for clarity.

Line 527 – I’m uncertain what you are saying at the beginning of this paragraph.

Response: The opening of this paragraph has been reworded to aid in clarity.

Line 550 – How does the idea of consumer sovereignty impact your statement? Isn’t the consumer correct, even when they are uninformed?

Response: This is an interesting point. In this section, it was not our intention to make a claim regarding whether or not consumer perceptions are correct or incorrect. We intended to convey that, from a marketing perspective, the relative accuracy of consumer perceptions could, arguably, take a back seat to the potential profitability of those perceptions.  

Line 570 – I highly encourage you to check the economic literature on this statement as I’d be surprised if someone hasn’t already researched this question. You should definitely view Jayson Lusk’s work on this subject. I recommend at the very least his co-authored paper in Food Policy from 2018 (78, 81-90) and in Annual Review of Resource Economics from 2021 (co-authored with Roosen and Bieberstein).

Response: There is certainly a lot of existing work on consumer behavior, food labels, and GM perceptions. Thank you for these suggestions. We were referring to work that specifically examined the different methods of GM disclosure and the relationship between those disclosure methods and consumer behavior.

References – There are typos and more information is needed on some references. For an example on reference 2, which USDA agency? What’s the website if there is one? You are also missing reference 31.

Response: Thank you for this point. All references have been thoroughly reviewed and updated. The USDA citation (reference 2) is referencing the USDA website, and no subsidiary within the USDA is listed as an author.  Reference 31 is now included.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I have one more comment regarding the template (tables), but I guess that the editors will ask you about it. Overall, your paperwork has improved enough to be publish.