The shock was something akin to Charles Haughey coming clean and admitting he had, literally and metaphorically, taken the shirt off the poor man's back. The head of GM-advocate Monsanto, Mr Robert Shapiro, addressed a business conference of his arch-foes - Greenpeace - and went so far as to admit his company had come across as arrogant and condescending in pushing the case for the new technology.

Mr Shapiro said it appeared the company had "irritated and antagonised more people than it had persuaded" of the merits of genetically modified foodstuffs.

The move is the latest in a series of conciliatory gestures by the US giant, which has admitted that it has effectively lost the public relations battle over GM foods.

The more cynical among its opponents argue the about-turn has more to do with fears that European consumer hostility may lead US farmers to abandon the technology, hitting the biotech companies in the pocket.