Britain is paving the way for gene-edited food – will the public stomach it?

Greenpeace protesters who attacked a field of genetically modified crops in Norfolk in 1999 were acquitted by a jury. Photograph: Greenpeace/PA

At the height of the anti-GM movement, in 1999, the then head of Greenpeace UK, Peter Melchett, was charged with theft and criminal damage after scything down a field of genetically modified maize.

In a decisive victory for the anti-GM movement, Lord Melchett and 27 fellow activists were acquitted by a jury in what many took as a measure of the profound negative public sentiment towards GM technology.