A science communicator has blamed decisions made two decades ago for why consumers have been slow to accept genetically modified foods.

Consultant Dr Craig Cormick said GM was pitched too heavily at farmers and companies, rather than consumers when it was first marketed 20 years ago.

He said while the majority of Australians neither supported nor rejected GM foods, with the debate largely happening at polar ends of the spectrum.

"About 15 per cent are at either end, we call them the 'polar bears', who say they either 'never ever eat GM food' or 'GM is fine, there's nothing wrong with it'

"The rest, 60 to 70 per cent of the public we call the penguins because they move around a bit depending on the issue or the topic, tend to say 'it's OK if you prove it's safe,' or 'OK if you prove it's regulated'."

Monsanto this month marked 20 years of GM in Australia.

The cotton industry has embraced GM, with it accounting for almost all of Australia's crops.

It's a different matter for commercial crops of GM canola, with bans in South Australia and Tasmania.

Only around 10 per cent of New South Wales and Victorian grain growers use GM canola, with the figure around 30 per cent in Western Australia.

Dr Cormick said he believed the heat had come out of the debate compared to 15 years ago.

But he said those attitudes didn't translate into consumers purchasing GM food.

"Historically, what defined the public debate, as with the nuclear industry or fracking, the first utterances on GM food are interesting," Dr Cormick said.

"The developers of GM crops looked at the end customer, which was the farmer.

"The farmers were pretty keen on the first generation of GM crops, but [Monsanto] forgot they were selling to somebody else, because they had no experience selling to somebody else.

"The consumer looked at it and said 'so you're getting the benefit and I'm taking the risk? I don't think so'."

Repositioning GM

As companies continue to investigate GM for food and medicine, Dr Cormick said they could learn a lesson from what he describes as early failures.

"Insulin is almost all GM, there's no problem there, because it's health and medicine, while genetic markers technology is booming ahead," he said.

Dr Cormick said the first generation of GM foods was a lost cause and debate.

He said there would be other gene technologies that were likely to be more acceptable for the public, they just need to be raised with consumers.

"Companies need to ask the public what they want, like what might be healthier, richer in Omega 3, or technology to address obesity and diabetes," Dr Cormick said.

"If people see the risk they'll start adopting the technologies."