A genetically modified soya bean that contains health-giving fish oils is the sort of advance that might find favour with consumers and even convince sceptical Europeans that biotechnology has something going for it.

Before we can say for certain that it is beneficial, though, the results of this study will need to be scrutinised and independently replicated. The novel food products prepared from it will also, quite properly, be subject to a set of onerous regulatory hurdles before they appear on our supermarket shelves. The key issue, which has been lost in the furore over GM, is that it is the new characteristic of the crop, rather than the means by which this is produced, that should be placed under scrutiny with regard to impact on the environment or human wellbeing.

When the UK conducted enormous field experiments on herbicide-tolerant GM crops a few years ago, the focus was on the impact the modified crops had on weed control and biodiversity. It was never a test of GM technology per se, and every new crop must be assessed on its merits.

There are signs in Europe that we are beginning to realise that we can no longer take cheap food, or even food security, for granted, and that there may indeed be real potential benefits to be derived from the adoption of GM technology. So perhaps now is the time for us to catch up with the rest of the world where these crops are, with great benefit, being grown over substantial areas, and to reexamine critically the regulatory framework that we have erected. It sometimes seems to have been designed and operated to exclude and discourage just the sort of innovation we are going to need to address environmental and health issues.

The gains for humanity from scientific plant breeding have been immense – not least the ability to feed 6 billion people from about the same amount of land as was cultivated 50 years ago when there were half as many inhabitants on the planet.

The author is director of Rothamsted Research, a publicly funded agricultural science institute

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