[LONDON] Proposals to create an international panel to study the scientific basis of the potential dangers of genetically modified (GM) crops - comparable to that which already exists for climate change - could emerge from an intergovernmental meeting to be held in Edinburgh next week.

The invitation-only meeting will involve about 400 scientists, politicians, policy-makers and non-governmental organizations. It has been organized by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development at the request of heads of the so-called G8 group of industrialized nations, in particular the French president Jacques Chirac, under the title 'GM Food Safety: Facts, Uncertainties and Assessment'.

Sir John Krebs, chairman of the conference and recently appointed head of Britain's Food Standards Agency, says that one idea put forward by "a number of people" is an international forum for debating scientific issues, like the International Panel on Climate Change.

"If one went forward with a panel that looked at the science, one would want it to be a scientifically focused forum, but also to recognize that one would then have to fold in value systems, beliefs, economic implications, and so on," says Krebs, who is also professor of zoology at the University of Oxford.

Krebs says that the main purpose of the meeting is to identify, through dialogue between individuals and groups with different, and often opposing, ideas, "areas of greater convergence and areas of lesser convergence".

"What we have seen in the past few years is a slanging match. I would hope that this might trigger a long-term process by which other matters related to trade and the environment can be debated in an open way," says Krebs.

A report on the Edinburgh meeting is due to be delivered when the G8 industrialized nations next meet.

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