[Editor’s note: The following is a study by Barry Goodwin, Michele Marra, and Nicholas Piggott, from the Agricultural and Resource Economics department at North Carolina State University.]
We examine the consumer cost consequences of choosing GMO-free food over food that contains GMOs. Using text-mining algorithms applied to detailed product descriptions contained in a proprietary database of individual GMO and GMO-free foods at the retail level, we find that, when directly compared item by item, GMO-free food costs an average of 33% more than a comparable food item that is not GMO-free. When compared on a per-ounce basis, GMO-free foods cost an average of 73% more. Generalizing to the cost of a typical market basket of food consumed by American households, GMO-free food consumption would increase the average family food budget from $9,462 to $12,181 per year.
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In short, the budgetary implications of a GMO-free diet are substantial. GMO-free food items are shown to be more expensive than conventional alternatives. GMO ingredients play an important and ubiquitous role in the US food supply. Even small increases in the costs of these ingredients translate into significant impacts on the typical US household.
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[The full study is available here]
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post:ย The Cost of a GMO-Free Market Basket of Food in the United States
