GM food safer than normal food, government adviser says

Genetically modified foods are likely to be safer to eat than conventionally produced crops, the government's outgoing chief scientific adviser, Sir David King , said today.

Reaffirming his long-term support for GM, King said that many of the reservations and concerns about the controversial technology have proved to be "unreal".

With the world's population rising and climate change likely to affect crop yields, GM technology provided a "sophisticated" solution to future demands for food, he said.

King said that with its pioneering role in molecular biology, Britain was well placed to develop the technology safely.

GM opponents described King's faith in genetic manipulation in solving future food demands as "pure fantasy".

"There is not a shred of evidence that GM crops will increase yields," said the Friends of the Earth GM campaigner Claire Oxborrow. "They are all modified for insect resistance and the big money is going into commodity crops like soya, cotton and oilseed rape, which are monoculture and limit biodiversity.

"Consumers want better local produce and GM crops are not going to provide a solution to that."

King steps down at the end of the year after seven years in the post. He will use a valedictory speech at the Royal Society this evening to argue the case for GM food.

"By mid-century, the current population of 6.5 billion will have reached 9.5 billion. We have got a planet with overstretched resources," he told the BBC's Today programme.

"If we are going to feed that population, with climate change, with changing rainfall conditions, we are going to have to get even cleverer with developing new crops.

"We need the technology that can deliver that, and in my view we have the technology. It is GM."

He acknowledged that a sizeable proportion of the population had worries about the development of GM products. "I think there are all sorts of concerns that are turning out to be unreal," he said.

King said tight regulation was needed to ensure that GM was developed in a way that allayed public anxieties, and said Britain had shown itself able to put the right regulatory framework in place.

"It is a highly sophisticated technology," he said. "One of the things I really do want to say is that, because the technique is so sophisticated, in many ways it is probably safer for you to eat GM products - plants that have been generated through GM - than normal plant foods, if you have any sort of reaction to food, because you can snip out the proteins that cause the negative reaction to certain parts of the population."

King was appointed chief scientific adviser in 2000. He has described climate change as the "biggest single global challenge we face" and has said that all nations need to draw up plans to adapt and mitigate the effects.

The dangers posed by climate change include a massive threat to wildlife, he has said, and the potential for hundreds of millions of people to go hungry.

Last year he said nuclear power should be used to provide as much as 30% of Britain's energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In his BBC interview, King said more must be done to deliver a future beyond the Kyoto climate treaty, and that he was "feeling very impatient about this". To prevent long-term disaster he said a global target for atmospheric carbon should be set.

He said he was disappointed that the British government had not pushed forward with more nuclear power stations after its 2003 energy white paper.

[link to www.spinwatch.org]