Speaking at a biotechnology seminar at the Future Summit yesterday, Jim Peacock said he expected a change of attitudes to GM food stemming from its ability to add exotic nutrients and supplements rather than making food cheaper or tastier.
Dr Peacock said this type of benefit would become more significant when traditional sources of nutritional supplements, such as the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish, became scarce.
"The trouble is our practices in overfishing have ensured that our fish supplies are not going to satisfy the need the population will have for all those fatty acids," Dr Peacock told the seminar.
"We now realise it's not the fish that make those fatty acids, it's the little plants in the ocean that the fish eat. And it's been possible to learn the genetic sequence from those one-cell plants in the ocean that are needed to help other plants like canola make exactly the same omega-3."
Dr Peacock said the evolution of GM food had been delayed by commercially self-serving organic farmers and "unprincipled activists" who had portrayed the technology as dangerous.
In the 1990s, Safeways supermarkets in Britain introduced a GM tomato puree that was marketed on its GM properties. It outsold its nearest rival by two to one before the campaign against GM began in 1998. At that time, about 10 million consumers were eating the product, which was eventually withdrawn when Spanish growers decided not to grow the tomatoes.
Eminent medical researcher Gustav Nossal said resistance to GM was waning but said its proponents still needed to demon strate how it could deliver benefits to consumers rather than growers.
"To say farmers are going to make 30 per cent more canola and therefore turn a small profit into a big profit, that won't wash with consumers," Sir Gustav said.
Jim Falk from Melbourne University said consumers were resistant because they did not like the way information on the technology was disseminated and were uneasy with changes to the natural order of the food supply chain.
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