Stringent EU regulations on GM are hampering crop development and risk denying the UK access to competitive markets, according to new research.
The Council for Science and Technology (CST) has written to David Cameron to urge better quality debate, decision-making and regulation of GM at UK and European level.
The letter said that regulations should be reframed to focus on products rather than technologies, and on risk-benefit rather than risk alone.
It also suggested there should be more field trials of GM crops in the UK to evaluate efficacy of new products.
CST co-chairs, Sir Mark Walport and Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, wrote: “It is not accurate or helpful to talk about GM generically. Advocates and opponents have both, at times, been guilty of over-generalisation.
“The message must be that each genetically modified plant needs to be considered specifically. “GM” is neither intrinsically safe nor unsafe. The questions are always: what plant? what genetic modification? for what purpose?”
The letter also addressed a common concern held by GM opponents, who are not concerned by GM itself, but by corporate control of the food chain.
They wrote: “An automatic association of the concept of GM with multinational corporations needs to be challenged: the application of philanthropic funding by the Gates Foundation for GM research of direct benefit to small farmers is a case in point.”
The CST was asked by David Cameron for the latest evidence on the risks and benefits of GM technologies in agriculture, and for advice on current regulation.
In turn, it commissioned research from Rothamsted Research, The Sainsbury Laboratory and Cambridge University.
The report recommended using public funds to trial ‘public good’ GM crops, which it calls ‘PubGM’. These traits could include nutritional enhancement, such as antioxidants in tomatoes, or climate protection qualities such as drought or heat resistance.
Professor Cathie Martin, of the John Innes Centre, one of the creators of GM purple tomatoes, told the BBC that multinational companies are the only ones trialling GM because they are the only ones who can afford it.
The news comes as last week a group of environment bodies and NGOs wrote to the PM to condemn environment minister Owen Paterson’s support for growing GM crops in Britain.
The group, which included organics trade body, the Soil Association, said that if GM crops are grown in England, conventional farmers may have to pay the costs of segregation and certification of crops in order to access other GM-free markets.
They claimed that plans to grow herbicide-tolerant GM crops commercially in the UK were abandoned in 2004, following the Farm Scale Evaluations (FSEs), which showed that blanket spraying with weedkillers destroys important habitats for wildlife.
The letter from the environment groups said that 'superweeds’ which have evolved in resistance to RoundUp are now adversely affecting half of US farms surveyed in 2013.
This in turn has led to major economic and environmental problems as spraying with other more toxic weedkillers has increased in response.
Chief scientist for Greenpeace, Doug Parr, said: 'The UK Government is so in thrall to industry hype that they want to deconstruct the EU single market – previously the only thing about Europe they wanted to keep – in order to grow GM crops that nobody wants.”
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