“Europe’s lack of trust in GMOs reflects a wider distrust of science. Similar attitudes prevail concerning shale gas and nuclear power. The irony is that the generations who have benefited most from scientific progress are now the most suspicious of science.”
Europeans do not like anything that isn’t European. If European scientists had created these GMO foods most Europeans would not have a problem with them.
Western Europe is parochial and urbanized, and has not outgrown the pernicious effects of nationalism and group allegiance.
For Europeans, science is something that ‘happens somewhere else’ and is done ‘by other people’. It is done by strangers in strange places, with strange results. As a result, science provokes a nearly reflexive reaction ranging from suspicion to hostility.
This is hardly new news, it’s as old as Blut und Boden, which itself wasn’t new at the time. And it’s so firmly embedded in the culture that it won’t be changing any time soon.