By Richard Suchet

In the developing world, an increasing number of people are going hungry.
There is a global food shortage and prices are rocketing.
But some scientists believe the solution lies close to home. The answer,
they say, is genetically modified food.

There are no wholly GM foods in Europe but European leaders - particularly
those who attended the G8 summit in Japan earlier this week - have made a
commitment to re-examine the possibilities that science, but more
importantly GM, might provide.

"At the moment it's quite clear, we're going to need more food - possibly
50% more - than we currently produce to feed a global population of 9bn by
2025," said GM expert Professor Ian Crute, director of Rothamsted Research
Centre.

"GM is not the only answer but it's certainly going make an important
contribution to world food production."

But laboratories such as the one at Rothamsted are expensive to run. To pump
millions - even billions - of pounds into research requires political will.

So ferocious was opposition in the 90s that the widespread introduction of
GM food was almost totally rejected in Europe. People were sceptical of the
motives for developing GM and there are still campaigners who feel strongly.

Pete Riley, from Friends of the Earth, told Sky News: "The winners here will
clearly be the bio-technology corporations of Europe and America.

"They have invested billions in research and their shareholders, whom they
primarily serve, are looking for a return.

"GM crops were not produced for the benefit of small farmers and consumers.
They were produced for the benefit of corporations."

For over a decade now, millions of people have been consuming GM food in the
west.
But anti-GM sentiment in Europe runs so high that research has been severely
hampered.

Fields utilised for research - some of which were being used to establish
what the environmental impact of GM crops might be - have often been
destroyed by anti-GM campaigners.

But Plant Scientist Professor Chris Leaver believes that such actions are
born out of inherent selfishness rather than from legitimate political
grievances: "I'm very concerned that people who destroy crops do so for
their own ends - either because they're anti-globalisation or anti-America,"
he said.

"They are naive and what they are doing is frankly obscene. They are happy
to accept the benefits of modern medical science despite the fact that much
of that relies on GM."

The debate about GM food is likely to go on for years but all the while
there is an increasing urgency to feed millions of hungry mouths.

www.checkbiotech.org