Attitude and consumption of Bangladeshi professionals toward biotechnological products

The scientific revolution in molecular biology over the last three decades has led to swift progress in accepting the genetic modification of a living organism and the ability to develop processes and products useful for food security, nutrition and human health [2]. Since the first production of biotechnological products, it has been seen that these products have attracted the increasing attention of the world and are offered for consumption on the wider scale [30]. In fact, the global areas of biotech crops have increased more than 100-fold from 1.7 million hectares in 1996 to over 179.7 million hectares in 2015, which continues to grow rapidly [18]. The countries that have allotted the largest planting areas to biotech crops are the USA (40.01%), Brazil (23%), India (6.28%), Canada (6.16%), China (2.4%), Paraguay (2.05%) and South Africa (1.66%) [17]. The trends of introducing new and cultivation of existing biotech crops are increasing dramatically in many developed and developing countries.

There is a huge variation in attitude and consumption of biotechnological products among various nations in the world [3]. The literature shows that the attitude of Americans towards biotechnological products is more positive than those of Canadians and citizens of the European Union [1]. China is still struggling with issues of consumer safety and acceptance, whereas many competing factors are putting pressures on policy makers to decide decision towards continuing of commercializing transgenic crops [15]. Most Korean consumers have been reported to be suspicious of the safety of biotechnological products, with 93% demanding the labelling of these foods [21]. Although there have been a number of consumers and farmers’ studies conducted on knowledge, attitude and behaviour with regard to genetically modified (GM) foods in both developed [7, 19] and developing countries [6, 34] in the world, almost no studies have considered the factors that influence both the attitudes and consumption of Bangladeshi professionals.

While other countries are making impressive progress in biotechnology, Bangladesh has also made a successive improvement in this field. Bangladesh approved the first official release of four genetically modified varieties of insect-resistant Bt brinjal in 2013 for seed production and initial commercialization. This year (2017) about 65,000 farmers all over the country cultivated Bt brinjal which improved marketable yield by at least 30% and reduced the number of insecticide applications by a massive 70–90% resulting in a net economic benefit of US$ 1868 per hectare [13]. Inspired by the success of the country’s first commercially released biotech crop—Bt brinjal— Bangladesh is now doing field testing three more crops developed through applications of genetic engineering which are late blight-resistant potato, Bt cotton and golden rice [10]. In the pharmaceutical industry, Bangladesh can ensure substantial saving of money if Bangladesh did not need to import 80% of the active ingredients and precursors from developed nation [5].

Bangladesh is an agro-economic country with a large population compared to its land area and resources. It is projected to reach country’s population at 192.9 million by 2025 and economic growth transforming the lives of millions, and our food demand is expected to be much higher than its current growth of production. Therefore, a growing need to develop stress-tolerant crop varieties to combat climate change induced disasters such as flood, drought and intrusion of salinity where biotechnology can play crucial roles to resolve these pivotal issues. The attitudes and consumption of professional respondents seem pivotal to measure the acceptance level of biotechnological products in various stages, which is beneficial to the businessman, policy maker, etc., who have the desire to invest in this sector. Therefore, it is crucial to create a demand-driven market of biotechnological products in Bangladesh to ensure increasing demand of food and nutritional security. This study tried to focus two concepts: firstly, the attitude of the respondents which reflect the knowledge and belief of respondents toward biotechnological products and secondly, consumption of biotechnological products by the respondents which shows the extent of consuming the biotech products.

Research framework

Attitude is a predisposition or a tendency to respond positively or negatively toward a certain idea, object, person or situation. Consumption is a decision to make full use of an innovation as the best course of action available found in the unpublished thesis of Roy in 1997. When an individual takes up a new idea as the best course of action of practices, the phenomenon is named as consumption. In order to develop the conceptual model of the dependent and independent variables of this study, the conceptual model of Rosenberg and Hovland is kept in mind [33]. The dependent variables were attitudes and consumption of biotechnological products. The independent variables were professionals’ age, education, length of service, knowledge and information source. The dependent variables are directly influenced by the independent variables. Consequently, the attitudes and consumption towards biotechnological products varied with the selected characteristic of the respondents. Therefore, it is a prerequisite to pondering the contributing factors of attitude and consumption towards biotechnological products. The conceptual framework of the study is shown in Fig. 1.

Biotechnology especially genetically modified (GM) organism is considered as one of the cutting-edge technologies for achieving food and nutritional security of Bangladesh. One GM food crop, Bt brinjal, is well accepted by both farmers and consumers. In year 2017, more than 65,000 growers cultivated it all over the country. Other GM food crops such as golden rice, late blight-resistant potato and Bt cotton are now at the final stage of field trials. This study for the first time assessed the attitude and consumption of professionals in Bangladesh toward biotechnological products. It is revealed that Bangladeshi professionals have an optimistic outlook about biotechnology and its products. However, age and education of the respondents significantly influenced their attitude toward biotechnological products. Although perception, attitude and acceptance of consumers and professionals toward biotechnological products have been investigated in many countries [1, 3, 11, 15], this study for the first time assessed and compared the attitude and consumption of professionals from both public and private sectors towards biotechnological products in a developing country, Bangladesh.

One of the interesting findings of this study is that a large majority of the respondents (86%) were young- to middle-aged categories (Table 1). Almost similar results were found in a study for the Greek consumers [4]. The young- and middle-aged people are more interested in participating in a learning context compared to the old-age people. In current study, majority of the respondents (98%) had master’s to the Ph.D. levels of education. The highly educated Greek consumers were also found to be more aware of the GM products compared to the less educated consumers [4]. Our findings revealed that a great majority of the respondents (90%) had moderate to a long length of service experience. As biotechnology is a fast moving area, the regular training to young job holders involved in the development of biotech products may be needed for improvement of their professionalism [16].

Media has an important role in informing the people about biotechnology and its products [28]. Nearly three-fifths of the respondents moderately used various information sources to gather knowledge on biotechnological products (Table 1). In current study, two-fifths of the respondents used mass media (television, radio, newspaper, research publication and the Internet), which is followed by interpersonal sources (32%) and group media (31%), respectively. Similar results were found in sever earlier studies on genetically modified (GM) crops in other countries [8, 40].

Timely diffusion of knowledge is necessary to develop an informed society about biotechnological products [22]. To understand the level of the knowledge of the Bangladeshi professionals on biotechnological products, they were asked a series of questions under three categories, viz. awareness knowledge, principle knowledge and application knowledge. Our results indicate that around 63% of respondents had good knowledge on biotechnological products. Almost similar results were found in American consumers [36], but contrasting results were obtained in a study conducted in south-west Iran [11] and New Jersey [38]. Our results demonstrated that almost 41% of the research scientists are highly aware of the biotech products, whereas 32% of them knew the principle information on biotech products, and merely 27% of them applied their acquired knowledge in their research fields, which is not up to the expected level (Fig. 2). But a strong willingness to involve with biotech product development process was observed in the professionals in China [41]. A significant relationship between knowledge and attitudes has been found in several earlier studies [37, 39].

Acquiring knowledge by professionals and their application are critical for biotechnological development of a nation. In present study, around 40% of the university teachers were aware of the biotech products, while 31% had known working procedure of those products and a considerable 29% applied their knowledge in development of biotech products (Fig. 2). Almost similar phenomenon of awareness of knowledge and their implications were found in Slovenian teachers towards GMO [31]. Industry personnel in Bangladesh was highly involved (44%) in biotech product development although they were not highly aware (23%) about the biotech products. However, a reverse picture was observed in the industries in Malaysia [29]. In many cases, the research scientists have good knowledge on biotechnological products [14], but their application of knowledge in practical life was not always up to the expected level (Fig. 2).

Biotechnology is strongly influenced by the public attitude [27]. In current study, most of the respondents opined that Bt brinjal could be helpful to reduce the attack of brinjal shoot and fruit borer (Table 2). It implies that Bangladeshi professionals understand the effectiveness and consequences of Bt brinjal and they consider that it is beneficial for the production of brinjal in Bangladesh. Furthermore, many respondents preferred biotechnology as a tool to develop new varieties than traditional breeding. Similar results were found by plant breeders in earlier research [24]. It indicates that respondents understand the principles and mechanisms of biotechnology in the development of crop to ensure food security. In general, Bangladeshi professionals have positive attitude toward hardcore biotechnologies such as golden rice and gene therapy. In an earlier study, it has been found that gene therapy provides the treatment of debilitating, highly penetrant genetic diseases [35].

Transgenic animals in agricultural production systems show relatively inefficient production rate, which is disagreed by respondents of this study. It may be concluded that they are aware of transgenesis and its contribution to the crop production. Additionally, more than 50% of the respondents showed the negative attitude towards GMO and their consequences on biodiversity, and natural flavour and taste of food. The civil society of Ghana also showed the similar negative attitude towards GMO [20]. In current study, around 71% of the respondents had a favourable attitude towards biotechnological products (Fig. 3). Similar results were also obtained in China and Australia [22, 23], and contradictory results were found in Spain [25]. It implies that Bangladeshi professionals have good knowledge and perception on biotech products, which lead to their higher attitudes towards biotechnology. Socio-demographic profile of the consumers has been found as a factor which influences the attitude of professional towards biotechnology [4]. Our findings indicate that among all characteristics of the respondents, age and education have a significant positive relationship with their attitude (Table 3). Therefore, respondents of different service length, information sources and knowledge are similar in their pessimistic attitude towards the biotechnological products (Appendix 1). Therefore, the group of respondents with more aged and higher educational levels are more optimistic towards biotech products than younger age and lower educational levels. Almost similar results were found in Swedish consumers [26].

In current study, age, education, length of service, knowledge and information source of the respondents had no significant relationship with their consumption of biotechnological products (Table 4). Therefore, other strong factors may be influenced the consumption of biotech products by Bangladeshi professionals. According to Han and Harrison, consumer consumptions are affected by ethical concerns and the belief that the production of genetically modified foods is harmful to wildlife and the environment [12]. Further research is needed by including highly influencing factors toward the consumption of biotech products to clarify this unresolved issue.

In Bangladesh, private-sector respondents consumed around 68% of the biotech products, which is almost double the consumption by the public-sector respondents (Fig. 5). In fact, public-sector respondents had higher knowledge (53%) and highly favourable attitide (51%) towards biotech products compared to private-sector respondents. Similar attitudes of public-sector respondents towards biotechnological products have been reported [9]. The public-sector respondents were more knowledgeable and have a strong positive thinking towards biotech products in Bangladesh. They are conducting research on diverse biotechnological products continuously and trying to develop a healthy and eco-friendly product to meet the people demands. Although public-sector respondents have highly optimistic towards biotech products, they do not consume many products than private-sector respondents. However, private-sector respondents are commercially planning to increase the market of the biotech product. Therefore, they have to deal with the ready-made biotech products for advertising and marketing, which arises interest among the personnel to consume more biotech products. Additionally, sometimes private-sector personnel get sample packs of the products for their personal and family use. Therefore, private-sector respondents willingly adopt and use the biotech products due to the availability and less considering the controversial issues. The private-sector respondent had a high user of the information source (55%) to get latest news of biotech products compared to public-sector respondents (Fig. 5). The private-sector respondents were highly connected to the mass media compared to the public sector which might help themselves to be better up to date about the latest biotech products.

It is apparent that acreage of cultivation of biotechnological crops is increasing in Bangladesh as well as in the world. Introduction and expansion of biotechnological products in Bangladesh are phenomenal which has been strongly supported by the government. Bangladesh has successfully introduced a GM food crop, Bt brinjal, nationwide without any sensitivity from the consumers, indicating the higher prospects for the expansion of biotechnological products in Bangladesh. The country highly demands new technologies to ensure food and nutritional security of her growing population. However, the positive attitude and negative consumption level of the majority respondents shown in the study toward the biotechnological products seem a challenge in ensuring the safe use of biotechnological products in Bangladesh. This finding indicates the importance of providing right information for creating proper awareness to the population about biotechnological products. The research institutes in Bangladesh need to develop the GM technologies for ensuring food and nutritional security of the nation. To get a greater impact, development of awareness and ethical clarification are also needed for growing a positive attitude by the consumer toward biotech products. Enough extension services, campaign and application of mass media are needed for public awareness to biotech products before releasing them into the market. A further study is needed with the inclusion of a large population of different stakeholders for a precise understanding in existing situation and prospects for biotechnological products in Bangladesh.