The outpouring of indignance over the SNP Government’s ban on growing GM crops proves that food and politics are as bound up as eggs in an omelette. Or as scrambled as a mash-up.

Since it announced it was using the new EU opt-out to declare such crops can’t be grown in Scotland, opposition parties have descended on the government like a tonne of King Edwards, claiming scientific advice was not sought and that the way it was announced would fuel negative public perceptions about GMs. Clearly, a nerve has been touched.

The government says its decision was not a scientific issue; it was taken to protect the “clean, green” status of Scotland’s food and drink sector and was enabled by recent changes in the EU authorisation process which have broken the link between the scientific assessment of the safety of a GM crop and the decision on whether or not a GMO should be grown in a particular country, thus making the process more democratic.

Who wouldn’t want to guard that precious reputation, when it’s now worth a stonking £14bn – an economic miracle by anybody’s standards, performed entirely without GM crops?

It was a pre-emptive strike; no GM crops have been grown in Scotland since the ill-fated GM rapeseed trials in the Black Isle under the Lib-Lab Scottish government in 2001.

But it had the positive effect of thrusting the thorny issue of genetic modification – the process of introducing new or enhanced characteristics into a plant to make it herbicide intolerant or insect resistant - into the face of the modern Scottish consumer who may be ignorant of the long-standing controversies surrounding the issue.

This ignorance could be the reason there is more public acceptance of GM foods, as the pro-GM (or anti-SNP) lobby claims.

Their unknown impact on human health aside, it’s what these crops may do to the environment that is the issue here. Is there enough evidence that GMs nourish the soil and guarantee future crops, as claimed? Doesn’t glysophate, contained in the herbicide Roundup made by the US company Monsanto, deplete the soil and hasten the decline of the honeybee population? Won’t GM hand control of the food chain to the agrichemical companies?

At least 17 other countries - France, Germany, Italy and Northern Ireland among them – will join Scotland in opting out. This means Westminster’s decision to grow GM crops in England puts it at odds with many of its closest neighbours. Tricky.

In the food world as I know it, nobody - apart from some members of the National Farmers Union - wants them. Scotland is currently enjoying a food renaissance and the old culinary cringe has morphed into self-confidence. I’ve lost count of the number of bloggers, producers and cooks who have moved here from London and elsewhere because of the potential offered by our burgeoning food scene.

It all boils down to the hallowed word ‘terroir’, now being applied to Scotland’s unique growing climate by an admiring international foodie elite, not least by Thomas Keller, the double 3-Michelin star chef in New York.

Would all this be jeopardised were Scotland to embrace GM? The answer is simple. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.