The world is entering a new phase with the mass release of GM crops, which necessitates care but not any form of "pseudo ban" as exists in Europe, according to a leading plant biologist, Prof Klaus Ammann. At a conference in Dublin on the impact of genetics on society, the University of Bern botanist said an appropriate risk assessment structure was in place.
The EU had spent €100 million (£78.7 million) on GM food safety research, and thousands of research papers demonstrated the safety of the technology.
Such information was easily accessed but he questioned whether the "powerful, unregulated protest industry abusing science for scaremonger purposes" wished to access it.
Public anxiety about GM foods was "nothing bad". It was understandable debate was heated, as life was involved, "but whether it should go so far. Remember some fruits and vegetables are still safe to eat."
Every plant cultivar was genetically modified. "Maize is an artificial monstrosity . . . We eat mutant food," Prof Ammann told the Trinity College department of genetics conference at the National Concert Hall. This was not to suggest genetic modification did not have risks.
There was always a possibility of superweeds due to gene transfer between species, but they found their natural enemies and balance out over time.
Monarch butterfly larvae die on eating GM maize pollen in the lab, he noted, yet the larvae were not likely to be present when GM maize was pollinating. With the mass release of GM corn in the US this year for the first time, its population had increased. If he was a monarch butterfly, he would like to live in a GM corn field because less pesticide was used on it.
Consumers were capable of dealing with risk, said Mr Peter Prendergast, director of the European Commission's Food and Veterinary Office. There may be 43,000 fatal accidents in Europe a year but no one was calling for a ban on cars for safety reasons.
With the first GM foods, consumers were unable to manage the risk associated with them, they were unable to identify what foods were GM. "They simply had not got the information and labelling to manage, in their own way, the risk. GM foods will never sell in Europe until that ability is put in place."
The way initial GM foods were introduced was mistaken and a setback for biotechnology, but a negative approach to it in future would be wrong. He believed a lot of agriculture would switch to "pharmaceutical farming", but states like Ireland had not even begun to examine the implications of this.
