Do Preferences for Regulation or Labeling of Biotech Foods Differ Across Political Spectrums?

Jayson Lusk has an interesting post on his blog related to an article in the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics finding an interesting relationship between left leaning voters and their willingness to support GMO labeling initiatives:

“One distinction, which I think is missing, is the greater willingness of those on the left to regulate on economic issues, such as GMOs, than those on the right. Stated differently, there are questions of science: what are the risks of climate change or eating GMOs. And then there are more normative questions: given said risk, what should we do about it? Even if the left and the right agreed on the level of risk, I don’t think we should expect agreement on political action.”

In other words there might be different thresholds for the level of risk required to support a given policy interventions across the political spectrum. I go into some deeper dives about states of knowledge and risk perceptions in relation to this at economic sense - see Left vs Right Science vs Risk vs Propensity to Regulate.