'Modified' starches have been with us for decades. It simply means that the properties of the starch have been adjusted. It does not mean that the starch has been produced by GM techniques.

The word 'modified is sometimes used in food science in a context which has nothing whatsoever to do with genetic engineering. The most common use is the term 'modified starch' (E1410), which is starch that has been chemically cross-linked to impart stability to heat and acids. In another form of modification, the starch is pre-gelatinised; normally starch is not wetted by cold water and requires heating to form a paste. Pre-gelatinisation enables it to form a gel with cold water and this is used in many 'instant' foods such as desserts, mousses, toppings and whips.

There is sometimes a suspicion of anything modified, as if most foods weren't modified by definition. Cream, butter and cheese are modified milk, but when the term 'milk solids' appears on labels it is sometimes viewed with suspicion. Butter is milk solids, separated out from the milk and, even in the most traditional way of making, subjected to an industrial process. Bread is a wholly unnatural substance conjured into being by an entirely human-devised industrial process.

But what of ingredients which might be produced from a genetically modified crop? Soya is one of the crops for which GM varieties have been developed and soya is widely used as a source of flours etc. Genetic modification is not going to affect the nature of the starches produced in soya for example. The building blocks of starch, amylose and amylopectin, are going to be the same, whether GM or not GM.