The Opinion of Palestinian Society in Tulkarm District on Genetically Modified (GM) Crops

Abstract

The issue of genetically modified (GM) crops becomes recently an important aspect worldwide, and this is due to the food shortage and continuous population increasing. There are confusion and disagreement about using GM crops among different nations globally. GM crops are relatively a new issue in Palestine. To our best knowledge, there is no previous information about the opinion of the Palestinian people about GM crops. The aim of this paper was to screen the opinion of the Palestinian people in Tulkarm district about GM crops. This district will be a first step in screening the opinion of the people in all Palestinian’s districts about GM crops. The research was carried out by distributing a structured questionnaire with 36 questions to 350 persons. The questions implicitly concentrated on three main aspects: perception, strategies for improving public awareness and regulation in the legalization of GM products. Data analysis was carried out using Chi-square tests in Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM, SPSS, version 15), and Microsoft Excel 2007 (Microsoft Office, 2007) was used for making graphs. Answers of the questionnaires were examined in their significance differences (p<0.05) with four independents variables (age, gender, education and career). It was found that there is mixing between GM crops and other related concepts. Different media can be used for disseminating GM crops information. However, internet, radio and TV are the most preferred media methods. Further research still needed for making a clear picture of GM crops issue in Palestine.