Genetic food modification worked out well the first time it was tried.

By planting seeds from the best grain season after season or breeding the best animals to one another, our ancestors changed gene pools and gave civilization its start.

The earliest known practitioners of biotechnology — Babylonians who added a variety of yeast fungus to grain about 5,000 years ago — produced beer and helped make civilization fun.

Proponents of modern genetic food modification through biotechnology expect it to help keep civilization going by feeding people who otherwise might starve, but the public is wary at best. Genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.s, are produced in a more systematic way today and create much faster changes to the food supply, often by adding genetic material from various species into others.

Scientists and laymen have very different opinions about these activities, typically done to boost yields or strengthen resistance to herbicides or insect damage. In a Pew Research Center survey published in January, 88 percent of scientists vouched for the safety of G.M. foods, as they’re usually called, dwarfing the 11 percent who considered them unsafe. Among the American public, 37 percent judged the foods safe and 57 percent unsafe.

The results suggest that there’s more to evaluating G.M. techniques than the food itself. Whatever its genetic code might say about the grain that it’s made from, man does not live by bread alone.

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