A controversial plan to grow genetically modified potatoes at two trial sites in Cambridgeshire and Derbyshire has gained government approval.

According to a report on the BBC website, Defra has given the go ahead for BASF Plant Sciences to proceed with the trials after a two-month public consultation.

The potatoes have been modified using a gene from a wild variety found in America, which is resistant to potato blight.

They will be planted next spring and trials will last several years, according to the BBC.

The Soil Association has deemed the decision “ stupid”, suggesting that other crops could be contaminated as a result.

A BASF spokesman said that nothing from the trials would be eaten, just tested under controlled conditions and then destroyed. “The possibility of a food crop from it is maybe 10 years down the line,” he told the website.

Soil Association policy director Lord Peter Melchett told BBC’s Five Live: “Nobody thinks that GM potatoes will seriously be used by British consumers or bought by them.”

He also said scientists would be unable to prevent contamination of other crops: “Well there aren’t any such guarantees,” he said. “You can’t do that.

“American farmers have found this year that the whole of their long grain rice crop has been contaminated as the result of a trial which took place and finished over five years ago.”

He added that it was “fantasy” to suggest that it would solve blight, saying: “...you knock it back one way it comes back another.”

In a statement from the Soil Association, Melchett said: “The Government is ignoring what consumers want to eat and their health and safety. Even in America, McDonald’s, McCain, Pringles and Burger King, rejected GM potatoes years ago. The chances of anyone in the UK willingly buying GM potato crisps or chips are zero. This trial is a monumental waste of time and money.

"Worse than that, GM potatoes are one of the GM crops where there is scientific evidence of potential risks to human health. And from UK government sponsored research which found stomach lesions in rats fed on GM potatoes, research findings confirmed by a second study in Egypt.”

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