A letter to the Guardian from the Governments chief scientific advisor in response to an article published on 6th January

Your article (Britain must launch GM food revolution, says chief scientist, 6 January), misrepresents my position and my paper at the Oxford Farming Conference. The paper makes no mention of GM and I have not said that Britain must launch a GM food revolution.

Increasing global population, urbanisation and purchasing power in parts of the developing world, combined with the need to combat climate change, means the world will need to produce 50% more food over the next two decades, using less land, less water, less fertiliser and less pesticide. Science and technology will have a vital role to play in helping the world combat these problems. That is why I launched the UK cross-government strategy for food research and innovation to develop solutions and to provide the evidence governments and the food industry will need to tackle these problems.

GM technology is not something that should be simply accepted or rejected. Indeed, it would be unwise to say either we must use, or we will never use, GM technology. The question that needs to be posed is, what particular problems of agricultural production can GM and/or other new technologies address? If GM technology can address some of the problems in agricultural production that conventional breeding or other technologies cannot, or can address them more efficiently and effectively, then clearly we need to be thinking about adopting it in these particular cases, with appropriate regulation ensuring safety to human health and the environment.

Professor John Beddington

Chief scientific adviser to the government

The Guardian - 11/1/10