Briefing notes by biotechnology industry members who met Environment
Minister Phil Woolas call for a rethink of regulations governing GM crops.
A copy of a briefing paper prepared for the meeting has been passed to the
BBC's Today programme.

Previously it had emerged that a call by Mr Woolas for a new debate on GM
crops came after he met a body representing the industry.

Mr Woolas suggested that, with prices rising, GM crops could improve yields.

He has said that the government is ready to argue for a greater role for GM
crops.

The briefing paper formed the basis for a presentation to Mr Woolas by
members of the Agricultural Biotechnology Council.

This is an umbrella group representing some of the leading companies
involved in developing GM crops.

According to BBC correspondent Tom Feilden, the notes make a powerful case
for the technology, but the most controversial section deals with the
situation in the UK and Europe.

It calls for a rethink on the regulation of GM crop trials, and for a review
to streamline and depoliticise the procedures governing the licensing of
genetically modified crops across Europe.

Benefit claims

The biotech industry says that GM technology can combat world hunger and
poverty by delivering higher yields and reducing the use of pesticides.

Sir David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser, told the
Today programme we needed the plant technologies as they would allow us to
produce "more crop per drop".

"This means that we need the most sophisticated plant breeding techniques
available to us and we need our scientists to be able to use these with
confidence, but within a properly regulated system.

"It's the product, case by case, that needs to be regulated."

While the technique now known as GM technology had been invented in Britain,
we were now "well behind the curve" in terms of developing products that met
the demands of the developing world, he said.

But green groups and aid agencies have expressed doubts over just how
effective the technology is.

An annual report by another industry body, the International Service for the
Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), published in February said
growing GM plants, such as maize and cotton, produced higher yields and
incomes and lowered pesticide use.

But GM Freeze, a coalition of groups including Action Aid, the Soil
Association, Unison and Greenpeace, said there was no evidence GM crops
boost yields.

Pete Riley, of GM Freeze, said: "There is more than enough food in the world
to feed everyone, it's just that the economic system put in place by
politicians has failed to ensure that that food reaches the people who need
it most, whilst other sectors of the population are becoming obese."

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By Michael McCarthy

Gordon Brown and the Government are today given a blunt warming about their
new enthusiasm for genetically-modified crops and food by the head of the
Government's own countryside and wildlife agency.
In a letter to The Independent, Sir Martin Doughty, the chairman of Natural
England, cautions against "rushing headlong to embrace GM crops as the
solution to rising food prices". He says they can cause harm to wildlife,
and there is little evidence that the present generation of biotechnology
crops will help in reconciling surging global food demand with protecting
the environment. His letter is a direct shot across the Government's bows,
and a response to its reopening of the GM debate last week, with ministers
from Mr Brown down indicating that the time has come for Britain and Europe
to relax GM restrictions in the face of the new concern about world food
supplies and prices.

Natural England's predecessor body, English Nature ? of which Sir Martin was
also chair ? which first raised the alarm about the damage the available
suite of GM crops, mainly engineered to be tolerant of powerful weedkillers,
could do to wildlife on British farmland. That concern led to the official
farm-scale evaluations of GM beet, oilseed rape and maize, which reported in
2003 that the weedkillers used with the first two were far more damaging to
wildlife than conventional herbicides.

The GM maize regime was found to be less damaging, although the conventional
weedkiller it was compared to, atrazine, was itself so harmful it was later
banned in the EU.

English Nature's stubbornness in insisting on the trials did not please the
Government, not least because Tony Blair was a committed advocate of GM
technology. Mr Brown will find the intervention of Sir Martin, a Labour
politician from Derbyshire, just as unwelcome.

"We need to be mindful of the lessons of the past before rushing headlong to
embrace GM crops as the solution to rising food prices," Sir Martin writes.
"The evidence of field-based trials on GM crops previously proposed for
commercial release in England demonstrates that they can have a detrimental
indirect impact on farmland biodiversity."

Natural England's own policy document, Biotechnology in the Natural
Environment, will be put before its board for approval on Wednesday. It
says: "Because GM can be used to develop organisms with radically different
properties, we are particularly concerned about potential impacts on
biodiversity that could be caused by changes in crop, tree or animal
husbandry."

A massive reduction in farmland wildlife has accompanied the intensification
of agriculture in the past 30 years

www.checkbiotech.org