Charles warns of GM food 'disaster'

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

He told the Daily Telegraph newspaper: "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."

Charles said relying on gigantic corporations for the mass production of food would threaten future food supplies. And he said small farmers would be the victims.

"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."

Charles' intervention comes at a time when soaring food costs and shortages are putting more pressure on the GM debate.

The price of food has been pushed up worldwide by poor harvests, some of which may be due to climate change, rising fuel prices, market speculation and the diversion of land into biofuel production.

The biotech industry says GM technology can be used to tackle hunger and poverty by delivering higher yields and reducing the use and therefore cost of pesticides.

But green groups and aid agencies fear claims about the potential benefits are not being borne out in practice. Critics say there is no evidence to show GM crops boost yields.