Nanotechnology in your food?

Stay tuned to this site. We'll keep you posted on developments in this area.

• Two hundred companies are already working on inserting nanotechnology into food, posing "immense" risks to health, new research claims.
• The study estimates that use of the technology in food has created an industry, now worth more than £1bn, which will grow within six years to more than £10bn, with thousands of firms involved.
• Last week, Prince Charles, writing exclusively in The Independent on Sunday, warned that the technology, which uses microscopic particles, a million of which would fit on a pin head, could lead to "upsets" similar to the Thalidomide disaster, unless care were taken.
• Leading scientists and the Royal Society condemned him for the analogy, but today he is backed by a leading expert on the technology, Professor Gregor Wolbring, himself affected by the drug Thalidomide.
• Nanotechnology, which is set to revolutionise industry and everyday life, deals with particles so small the laws of physics no longer apply.
• The technology is already used to preserve foods, and boost flavour and nutritional values.
• Meanwhile, a report for the US Department of Agriculture, describing some of these applications, says that nanotechnology "has the potential to revolutionise agriculture and food systems".
• Professor Steve Jones, of University College London, called him "a classic woolly thinker", and Lord Winston, the fertility expert, said he had raised "spectres'' and "science scares".
• The Royal Society criticised the prince's comparison, since nanotechnology was "not a new drug".
• But Professor Wolbring, of the University of Calgary, Canada, who was born without legs after his mother took Thalidomide in pregnancy, called such criticism "stupidity".