If you want to minimise the health risks in your life, don't start by worrying about genetically modified (GM) foods. That's the assurance from Dr Colin Hill, a microbial geneticist at UCC.

Cigarette smoking and driving a car after drinking five pints are far more dangerous, he says.

"This is not a blanket approval for genetically modified foods," he notes. "It's entirely possible that some genetically modified foods are unsafe, but those foods which are on the market are safe."

Hill's own area of research is food-poisoning organisms. He sits on the Food Safety Authority's scientific committee and is chairman of a subcommittee on genetically modified organisms and novel foods. Hill believes that the EU legislation governing the growing of genetically modified crops and the manufacturing of food containing genetically modified ingredients is extremely rigorous. However, since these regulations are not retrospective, soya and maize have escaped the processes. Hill points out, however, that in the US - where most of these crops are grown - they have to meet Food and Drugs Administration guidelines and those of the World Health Organisation, as well as strict standards required by many other jurisdictions throughout the world.

Austria and Germany are particularly sensitive to genetically modified foods, Hill notes.

In the US, he says, 15 per cent of soya is genetically modified; and, crops are not segregated, buyers have no idea of the proportion of genetically modified soya that their purchases contain. Both soya and maize are present in a wide variety of food products. "All we can say is that the ingredients of processed foods have a 15 per cent probability of containing genetically modified soya or maize."

A big issue for the consumer is choice and labelling. There is, though, an argument against blanket labelling. "If you label everything, you could be doing the customer a disservice. If you go into a supermarket and 80 per cent of products are labelled `May contain genetically modified food', what do you do? Do you only buy the 20 per cent of products that contains no such labelling? The danger is that people will quickly give up and become more accepting of GM foods."

Blanket labelling, he says, may not be the best way of alerting the customer. "People should be given the opportunity to make a decision between products which contain a product from a genetically modified crop - an oil for example - and a product which is a genetically modified variant - such as a tomato. If we fail to do this, we could end up presenting people with a take-it-or-leave-it situation, which would be unfair."

The Food Safety Authority, he says, favours informed labelling. Food companies, however, have blocked labelling, which states "this product does not contain GMOs" (genetically modified organisms), arguing that if they gave such a promise, there could be repercussions at a later date. There is, though, "a hint" that the EU may reconsider their position and permit this type of labelling.

Hill is concerned that that many of the issues surrounding genetically modified crops and food have nothing to do with safety. The "four Es" of genetic modification are: ethical, environmental, economic and eatability (safety), he argues. "These are major concerns that people have but they often get tangled up. People with ethical concerns - `we're playing God' arguments, for example - throw up scares about safety. The counter argument is that we have been interfering with nature since time began.

"It's not natural for a chicken to lay eggs every day nor is it natural for a cow to produce thousands of gallons of milk every year. We have been interfering with nature for so long that GM is not a quantum leap." Consuming genetically modified foods is all a matter of relative risk, he says. "The risk has been described by the World Health Organisation as `vanishingly small'.

"Many of the foods we eat would fail the GM and novel foods regulations - many, for example, contain higher levels of toxins than are permitted under the new rules." Economic arguments - poor farmers or impoverished countries will be unable to afford seed, GM multinational corporations will grow in power in relation to both farming communities and the world food supply - cause more worries about genetically modified foods. "I respect the right of people to be concerned, but it's important to separate the practices involved from the technology," Hill asserts.

Concerns about multinational control of the food chain and the ways large companies operate can be dealt with by legislation. Hill argues that GM research should not be left to the multinationals and that governments should fund independent research and, rather than patenting the results, make them freely available.

Environmental concerns include the contamination of other plant life by GM crops and damage to animal and insect life. "With good crop management, this shouldn't happen," Hill counters.

BSE is often cited as a reason for distrusting GMOs. "But BSE is a disease, while GM is a tool. They couldn't be more different," Hill argues.

"The best scientific evidence, supported by the vast majority of scientists, is that there is no evidence that these foods are unsafe and lots of evidence that they are safe."