"Evidence for Absolute Moral Opposition to Genetically Modified Food in the United States"

"the scientific consensus is that genetically modified crops are no more dangerous than conventionally bred alternatives. For example, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) writes that “the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the British Royal Society, and every other respected organization that has examined the evidence has come to the same conclusion: Consuming foods containing ingredients derived from GM crops is no riskier than consuming the same foods containing ingredients from crop plants modified by conventional plant improvement techniques” (AAAS, 2012). Likewise, independent scientific reviews of the environmental risks of GM agriculture have not yet uncovered meaningful risks to the natural environment above and beyond those of conventional (i.e., non-GM) agriculture (Nicolia, Manzo, Veronesi, & Rosellini, 2014; Sanvido, Romeis, & Bigler, 2007)...

A recent survey of U.S. adults and scientists found that only 37% of the public thought genetically modified food was safe to eat, whereas 88% of AAAS members thought it was (Pew Research Center, 2015). This 51-point gap between scientists and the public was the largest of any issue tested, including anthropogenic climate change and human evolution. This divergence between scientific and public opinion is striking and has stimulated a great deal of research on public acceptance of GM...

We argue that this combination of minimal knowledge and strong conviction is sensible if, for many people, attitudes about GM are the result of absolute moral values rather than consequence-based calculations. Psychologists have called these kinds of moral values “sacred” or “protected” values (Baron & Spranca, 1997; Tetlock, 2003)...

Disgustbased proscription seems to occur largely for behaviors that violate values pertaining to sex, food, and the body or those that evoke notions of unnaturalness, impurity, or contamination (Haidt et al., 1993; Rozin, Haidt, & McCauley, 2008). Consequently, disgust-based proscription may be especially likely for GM. Consistent with this possibility, genetically modified food is often described by opponents as unnatural (e.g., “Frankenfood”), as contaminating people by ingestion, and as contaminating the natural environment by contact (see McWilliams, 2015)"

http://yoelinbar.net/papers/gmo_absolute.pdf