Investigating Awareness and attitude of relevant experts on transgenic products

Due to the massive increase in the world population and the urgent need for food in recent years, progress in genetic engineering, creating genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has led to the widespread introduction of this technology, especially of genetically modified plants into the consumption market. Given the economic and environmental advantages, such as resistance to insects, herbicides and plant diseases, and increasing nutritional value of the crops, in spite of concerns about the safety of these food products their cultivation, as well as the number of farmers who cultivate them is being continuously increased. Therefore, in this research, the opinions of experts from fields of agriculture, biotechnology, passive defense and medicine, food industry engineers and PhD students were evaluated regarding the measure of information on different aspects of Genetically Modified Organisms, and various questionnaires and statistical measures were applied to draw inference about the public in general. According to the results of t-test, analysis of variance and mean comparisons, there was a significant difference between different experts and students, concerning knowledge about different areas of transference. PhD students, management experts, agricultural engineers, biologists and food industry engineers who participated in the survey were unfamiliar with transformation and its various aspects. Regarding ecological damage of genetically modified plants, environmentalists and entomologists need to have mid-career training courses to increase their knowledge. The group of doctors had the highest level of knowledge about Genetically Modified Organisms among the groups involved in this study. Regarding the accession of Iran to the Universal Protocol of Cartagena, unfortunately, there has been no perfect action regarding the labeling of transgenic products. Given the identification of transgenic elements within all the tested examples in this study and the probability of them being genetically modified, the implementation of the rule of labeling transgenic products in the country is an indispensable step.