Crop-breeding alternatives, unmet human need counters latest calls for more use of GM crops

Leading agricultural scientists in the UK suggest revisiting GM technology in answer to growing worldwide food security problems, but the technology topic is still hotly debated. Says John Beddington, chief government scientific advisor: “Biotechnology offers the potential to address these sorts of issues but it is quite legitimate to be concerned about the health impacts of these new crops and it is quite legitimate to ask about the environmental impacts.”
BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, listen again for more on the GM debate
Sense about Science report “Making sense of GM”  
 
Reader responds to revised look at GM crops
A letter from Molly Conisbee, Communications director at the Soil Association is published in The Observer in response to last week's article "It is now time to embrace GM technology".

Molly writes, "The impending food crisis facing Britain will not be solved by handing over our farming and food production to the vested corporate powers behind GM. While Chatham House is right to identify problems in our creaking global food systems, the answer must be in developing sustainable production that reduces our current binge-diet of energy and fertilisers and moves towards supporting climate-friendly farming models such as organic. GM will not put food in the bellies of the worlds hungry - it will trap them in a cycle of dependency on the handful of industrial giants that own seed and fertiliser patents.”
The Observer