David Cameron's official science advisers have called for GM crops to be rolled out across the UK by scrapping "dysfunctional" EU regulations that risk curtailing future food supplies.

"We take it for granted that because our supermarket shelves are groaning with food, there are no problems with the food supply, but there are," said government's chief scientific adviser, Professor Sir Mark Walport, citing rising global population, limited farmland and climate change. "If we don't use GM the risk is people going unfed."

In a report published on Friday, the scientists say GM crops should face the same regulation as conventional crops and that the UK government should take back powers from Brussels to be able to unilaterally approve the growing of GM crops across the UK.

The plant science experts who wrote the report, backed by the Walport, argue that decades of use of GM crops around the world have revealed no adverse effects. They say the UK should forge ahead with GM crops to help secure future food supplies, ensure UK farms do not become uncompetitive and benefit the UK's knowledge economy. GM crops are now grown on 12% of all the world's arable land but are barely used in the EU following years of public concern.

Walport and the report's authors argue that EU regulation – which has approved just two GM crops compared to 96 in the US – must be changed to test each crop on its merits, not on whether it was bred conventionally or by GM techniques. "When the correct tests are done, GM products are as safe as their non-GM counterparts," said Walport. "The EU decision-making has been dysfunctional. It makes much more logical sense to regulate on a product-by-product basis: technologies are neither universally safe or universally unsafe."

"The process takes years and costs millions of euros for each crop. Not surprisingly, there are very few applicants," said the report's lead author, Professor Sir David Baulcombe, at the University of Cambridge. The report notes that the EU imports 70% of its animal feed, most of it GM, and, in an article for the Guardian, Baulcombe notes: "Bizarrely, our animals eat GM quite safely although we do not have the option."

The report backs the conclusion of the European Academies Science Advisory Council that "there is no rational basis for the current stringent regulatory process".

A Roundup Ready Corn 2 logo appears on a bag of Monsanto seed corn on a farm in Princeton, Illinois. Photograph: Daniel Acker/Getty Images

The first GM plants were grown more than 30 years ago and the first commercial GM crop – the Flavr Savr tomato – was grown 20 years ago in the US. Now the area cultivated for GM crops is doubling every five years and already 80% of soybean and cotton has been genetically modified to withstand pesticides or repel pests. GM crops in development could withstand pests or diseases such as potato blight, which costs $5bn a year, cope with heat or drought, or have better nutritional or storage properties. One GM crop would even produce the healthy Omega-3 oils usually derived from fish.

But the report, commissioned by the prime minister's Council for Science and Technology and endorsed by Walport, recognises that significant public opposition remains.

Walport said: "It would be silly not to admit that there are some sections of the public who are unconvinced by the benefits or have doubts about the motives behind it. We have to be clear that GM is not all about profits for multinational companies." But he added: "There are obvious competitive benefits for the UK. We want the science done by the academic sector to yield the maximum benefits and one way is through the market place."

Claire Robinson, editor at campaign group GMWatch, said the report's authors were not independent of the industry with, for example, lead author Baulcombe receiving research funding and working as a consultant for the multinational Syngenta. "Their views should be treated with the same scepticism we would apply to any sales pitch," she said.

In response, another report author, Professor Jonathan Jones at the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich and also founder of GM patent-holding company Mendel Biotechnology, said: "I have the courage of my convictions because I think the technology has a lot to offer." He said public funding should be used to test whether GM traits would be useful in the specific climate and conditions of the UK, a recommendation made in the report. Jones said the specific regulations for GM crops were no longer needed: "We have been breeding GM plants for 31 years. There are no 'unknown unknowns'."

Monsanto Roundup Ready Yield soybean plants in a research field near Pirassununga, Brazil. Photograph: Paulo Fridman/Getty Images

Professor Jim Dunwell, at the University of Reading and another report author, said it cost $10-$20m more to put a GM crop through the EU approval process than for conventionally bred new crops. "There is a history of safe use for at least 20 years and the attitude that the technology is intrinsically unsafe is no longer valid. The regulation is not fit for purpose," he said. "Some of those costs will come down if those requirements are removed. But changing mindsets that are impervious to experience and evidence is difficult."

The prime minister will issue an official response to the report, although there is not set timescale for that to be published. In January, the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, backed GM crops in a speech: "Europe risks becoming the museum of world farming as innovative companies make decisions to invest and develop new technologies in other markets."