GM Crops & Food

Genome-Edited Food Crops and Consumer Choices

Climate change impacts crop cultivation by reducing yields, altering growing seasons, and increasing pest pressures through rising temperatures and extreme weather events. Towards sustainable agriculture and food security, crop breeding by genetic modification (GM) technology and genome editing technology may be one of the effective measures. Notably, genome editing technology can more efficiently attain gene addition, yield a small insertion or deletion, and change one DNA base pair at a specific site. Such genetic engineering technologies may also provide new crop varieties that meet diverse consumer needs for taste, convenience, environmental impact, and physical appearance. However, instead of risk communications, there have been tremendous controversies surrounding the food safety, labeling, and ethics of genetically-engineered crops.

Now, several countries, including Argentina, the USA, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Japan, and the Philippines, deregulate genome-edited crops that lack foreign DNA from GM technology regulation. Some genome-edited corps are already on sale. For examples, genome-edited, non-browning romaine lettuce seeds and a genome-edited high-GABA tomato variety are sold in the USA and Japan, respectively. However, those sales are still limited. Fundamentally, consumers choose some foods and do not others for various reasons. A recent analysis from Japan suggests that people who credit safety information and perceive usefulness accept the genome-edited tomato. Meanwhile, some consumers express safety concerns, advocating for mandatory labeling of "genome-edited." The majority of Japanese are not sufficiently aware of genome editing technology itself. Understanding and responding to people’s attitudes to genome-edited food crops and holding appropriate risk communications are vital in successfully introducing such agricultural products in each country.

This Article Collection invites submissions that investigate or analyze the consumer choices of genome-edited food crops in a country or selected countries. It brings together interdisciplinary studies (from social survey to comparative investigation and socioethical analysis) to provide a comprehensive overview of current situations and perspectives in the people’s awareness and acceptance of genome-edited crops. Potential subtopics for this Article Collection include, but are not limited to:

• Survey of people’s attitudes in a country.
• Comparison of consumer choices among countries.
• Comparison of consumer choices between GM crops and genome-edited crops.
• Analysis of potential risks and other factors that determine consumer choices.
• Points to consider in holding risk communications.
• Traits and/or crops that attract and/or repel consumers.
• Necessity and effect of labeling of “genome-edited” and/or “not genome-edited."
• Possibility of genome-edited organic crops.
• Future directions for better acceptance.

Keywords: Genome Editing, Consumer Choice, Social Acceptance, Risk Communication, Ethics

Guest Advisors: 

Prof. Tetsuya Ishii Ph.D. is a professor at the Office of Health and Safety at Hokkaido University, Japan. His research interests focus on bioethics in biotechnology, particularly in the areas of genetically modified food, gene therapy, and reproductive genetics. Prior to his current position, he worked at Kyoto University and the Japan Science and Technology Agency. Here is the link to his ORCID page: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7085-7750

Disclosure statement: The Guest Advisor declares no conflict of interest.

All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo desk assessment and peer-review as part of our standard editorial process; the Guest Advisor for this Collection will not be handling the manuscripts (unless they are an Editorial Board member).

Please review the journal scope  and author submission instructions  prior to submitting a manuscript.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is February 28th, 2026.

Please contact Ruby Ru at [email protected]  with any queries and discount codes regarding this Article Collection.

To submit your papers to this Article Collection, please:

1. Check "yes" for the question, "Are you submitting your paper for a specific special issue or article collection?"
2. Select the relevant Article Collection from the drop-down menu under the question, "Special Issue or Article Collection Name."