Prince warns of GM 'disaster'

In a passionate intervention on the issue of GM food, Prince Charles accused multi-national corporations of conducting an experiment with nature which had gone "seriously wrong".

He said: "What we should be talking about is food security not food production – that is what matters and that is what people will not understand.

"And if they think also that somehow it's all going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another then again count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time."

Prince Charles also said relying on gigantic corporations for the mass production of food would threaten future food supplies, adding that small farmers would be the victims. He said: "If they think this is the way to go we will end up with millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness, then you count me out. I think it will be an absolute disaster."

However, the GM food biotech industry has countered past criticism of it, stating that the technology can be used to tackle hunger and poverty by delivering higher yields and reducing the use of pesticides.