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Breads, pastries, salad dressings and margarines made from genetically- modified soya beans could pose unknown risks to shoppers when they reach British stores next month, scientists warned yesterday.

The new soya bean, developed by the US company Monsanto, is being harvested in the US this year and contains a gene which makes it resistant to a herbicide. But Dr Mae-Wan Ho, of the department of biology at the Open University, said regulators were taking too little care over the testing of such foods, and claimed that the foreign gene might have unpredictable effects on the final product. Charles Arthur