British government advisers have suggested genetically modified food may be safer than conventional crops, a verdict sure to enrage green consumers calling for stricter controls or bans on such products.
The advisers dismissed fears that such engineering was creating toxic bacteria, crops that threatened new allergies and animals with poor health - all allegations made in a recent Greenpeace report.
The Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes, including scientists and academics, said in an unpublished paper that conventional methods of crop improvement, including using wild relatives and different species, could already introduce risks into the food chain and change quantities of DNA, the building block of life.
In contrast, the regulatory system for genetically-modified crops meant: "We can define what it is put in, in terms of DNA sequence, and we have some knowledge of where it goes."
Such products also received much greater testing than conventional varieties.
But Dr Doug Parr, author of the Greenpeace report Genetic Engineering: Too Good To Go Wrong?, said the advisers have "missed the essential criticism - that genetic engineering is an unpredictable technique."
The rebuttal of criticisms was prepared last month before ministers prepared to delay licences for companies marketing seeds for modified oilseed rape or British government conservation agencies called for a three-year ban on the new type of crops because of fears over the future of native birds and the creation of mutant weeds.
The committee said Dr Parr's work had made "a strong case for continued vigilance" but provided no justification for changes to the current regulatory framework.
His examples of incidents where mistakes had occurred indirectly highlighted the strength of existing European rules.
Members said the focus should be on products and their risks rather than the technology used to produce them and dismissed suggestions that agricultural applications could introduce "irreversible and uncontainable" organisms into the environment.
The advisers' paper said: "In practice most crop plants, whether they have been genetically modified or not, do not survive in the wild . . . There is no mention of the fact that there are many millions of people alive today who would not have survived were it not for the massive improvements in crop yields brought about by the development of new agricultural technologies. Inevitably ensuring that food supplies keep pace with the growth in world population will involve a variety of other factors."
Dr Parr said: "They just don't deal with the unpredictability issue. It doesn't inspire me with confidence. One of our failures is the regulatory system misses out `big picture' issues. You hear the `it will feed the world' argument, but does not address issues such as land reform and wealth distribution."