Canadian consumers' assessments of potential risks and benefits of plant molecular farming and potential food industry implications

Statistical Methods for Part II The major analytical focus of this part of the report is the application of ordered probit analysis in models that relate the ordered risk rankings reported by respondents to individual respondent’s socio-demographic characteristics and their views of trust in the food system, proxied by a trust variable (trust in various sources of information). [...] When the samples meet the assumptions of the t-test, the Wilcoxon signed rank test tests for a significant difference between the means of the two groups; it tests for a difference in the distributions when the assumptions are not met (Winkler and Hays 1970, p. 857). [...] One of the goals of this study was to identify opinions and the strength of respondent’s attitudes toward government regulations and to food quality and safety, including possible concerns relating to genetic modification of food; several questions in the survey relate to these issues. [...] The first of these sets of questions (treatments) asked: “State the importance of each of these factors to the provision of food safety” while the second (treatment 2) asked: “State the importance of each of these factors on improving firm business performance.” Firms were asked to rank each factor on five-part response rating scales which ranged from “very important” to “very unimportant.” Using [...] Results, Analysis and Discussion of Pair-wise Tests of Firms’ Views of Factors Affecting Food Safety Risks and Business Performance In the third pair of sets of questions, respondent firms were queried about the risks of six potential hazards: “employee hygiene”, “GM sourced ingredients”, pathogen contamination”, “physical contaminants”, “pesticides” and “spoilage”, to the provision of each of foo