The government is to assess the potential risks posed by genetically modified foods by funding experiments on humans, despite declaring the foods safe last week.

The human trials, for which the protocols are already being prepared, will start next year in Newcastle and are funded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

They are thought to be the first of their kind undertaken anywhere in the world and have been given the go-ahead by Whitehall officials, who are concerned that genes from GM crops might have an impact on human health.

As The Sunday Times revealed last month, one potential risk being researched by government scientists is that the bacteria responsible for meningitis and other diseases might pick up antibiotic resistance from GM crops that are already being grown in Spain and America. The human trials are being organised despite public assurances from ministers that GM foods are safe. "We are not going to introduce these foods on an experimental basis," Jeff Rooker, the food safety minister, told the Commons on Thursday. "The public are not going to be used as guinea pigs."

Plans for new trials do not sit comfortably with such statements. Not only will they involve human volunteers but the GM foods they are to be fed have also been licensed already - up to 60% of processed foods on sale in Britain are thought to have a GM content.

The human trials, expected to start next year, will involve patients at a Newcastle hospital and are being organised by Professor Harry Gilbert, a biologist at Newcastle University.

Those taking part have all had unrelated operations on their digestive systems, creating a "window" through which scientists can monitor the food that passes through their intestines.

By feeding them a normal but carefully monitored diet containing GM food, the researchers hope to measure whether the new genes contained in the food could survive long enough to jump to bacteria in the human gut.

The trials follow a warning by British government scientists that two crops - Monsanto Roundup Ready cotton and Novartis maize - contain specific antibiotic resistance genes that could theoretically jump to the bacteria in the mouth that cause meningitis and the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhoea.

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