It might have been a good idea for 19th century automobiles to follow a person with a red flag. Restriction was necessary because we did not know whether the roads could take the cars, how farm animals would react and we did not have a highway code. In the same way it might have been prudent to have stringent restrictions on GM crops when they were first developed in the 1980s. However, just as regulation of self-propelled vehicles was changed in 1896, it is now time to rethink the regulation of GM crops.

For a GM food crop to be tested in British fields it must first be assessed by the UK's Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment and the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes. Then, before commercial cultivation, the European Food Safety Authority assesses evidence based on the results of the trials, and finally its "opinion" is voted on by EU member states. The process takes years and costs millions of euros for each crop. Not surprisingly, there are very few applicants.

Unfortunately the problems go beyond time and cost. Voting by member states is influenced by political agendas rather than evidence about safety and efficacy, and only one GM crop has been approved in Europe since 1998. In effect the EU regulatory process blocks GM crops just as the Red Flag Act suppressed the automobile industry in the 19th century.

In the meantime, other regions are planting more GM crops each year. Most of the world's cotton and soy are genetically modified and other crops including maize, papaya and rapeseed are benefiting from this new technology. However, although we do not grow GM crops widely in Europe, we do import GM animal feed. Bizarrely, our animals eat GM quite safely although we do not have the option.

In Romania the situation is particularly absurd because GM soybeans for animal feed used to be grown there and exported to the EU. Now, Romania has joined the EU and its GM soybean crop is banned. As a result Romania now imports GM animal feed and its farmers, who were previously making a profit, now receive EU subsidies.

The European roadblock on GM would be appropriate if there were evidence for an intrinsic hazard, but there is not. In the highly litigious USA, there has been no example for more than 20 years of any harm or legal damages being awarded due to GM crops.

Even the possibility of "unknown unknowns" does not stand up as a legitimate concern because the unpredictability of a new GM variety is much less than in conventional breeding. In GM a few new genes are transferred but, in a conventional hybrid, there are 30,000 genes from each parent and we have no way of predicting how they will interact. There is no suggestion that conventional breeding should be subject to a complex and politicised regulatory process but, correspondingly, there is no reason why GM should have this burden.

The dysfunctional regulation of GM in Europe means that small and medium-sized enterprises, universities and institutes are excluded from technology transfer into the field. As a result we are missing out on a vibrant agricultural biotech industry.

We are also missing out on improved sustainability of European agriculture because, despite the restricted commercialisation of GM, many new opportunities have emerged from ongoing research. There are, for example, plants with resistance to late blight and many other types of disease; oilseeds that could reduce the amount of fishmeal used in fish farming; strategies for weed control that are linked to improved phosphorus fertilisation; drought-tolerant crops and fruit that do not start rotting before they get to the consumer.

Some people talk about GM as always being "jam tomorrow". In fact, there could be jam today but we cannot get it out of the jar because the regulatory spoon is missing.

The emerging GM technologies are described in a report that I and a small working group prepared for the UK's Council for Science and Technology. The report is the technical annex to a letter from the CST to David Cameron, the prime minister, about GM. We propose that the regulatory process for GM should be proportionate and evidence-based and we suggest that the European impasse could be solved if the European Food Safety Authority's opinion is acted upon at a national rather than European level.

A global strategy for agriculture that accepts diversity and that integrates the best of biotechnology with that of traditional and organic practice would also help. Such a strategy would account for the needs of large and small farmers and it would be based on evidence. Food and agriculture are too important to be held up behind a red flag. We need minds that are open to new technology in agriculture and an end to the Punch and Judy of GM. It's time to start talking seriously about a new way forward for crops and how we grow them.

• Prof Sir David Baulcombe is an expert on plant disease resistance at Cambridge University