THE Vatican stunned opponents of genetically modified foods yesterday by declaring that they held the answer to world starvation and malnutrition.

Until the statement, the Vatican had been neutral in the confrontation between the European Union and the United States over GM food.

Archbishop Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said that the Vatican was preparing an official report on biotechnology, to be published next month, which would come down in favour of genetic modification. The document will coincide with a debate on GM by EU farm ministers.

Monsignor Martino told La Stampa newspaper that the Pope was greatly interested in new technologies for food development as part of a policy of sustainable agriculture. He noted that 24,000 people die every day from starvation.

Archbishop Martino, who until last year was the Vatican representative at the United Nations, said that he had lived for 16 years in the US “and I ate everything that was offered to me, including genetically modified products. They had no effect on my health. This controversy is more political than scientific.”

The forthcoming Vatican study will argue that the future of humanity is at stake and that there is no room for the argument advanced by some environmentalists that “nature is good and man is bad”.

Alfonso Scanio Pecoraro, head of the Italian Greens and a former Agriculture Minister, said that he was horrified. “The Church is using its authority to support a scam by the US multinationals,” he said. GM seeds were sterile and non-reproducible, so that the world’s farmers had repeatedly to pay the holders of the seed patents — American multinationals. “They will be able to turn the world’s food taps on or off,” he said.

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