Australian Nobel Prize laureate Professor Barry Marshall has labelled the lobby group supporting farmer Steve Marsh in landmark legal proceedings about GM contamination as dishonest.



Marshall told ABC radio the Safe Food Foundation's name was a "con job" because it implied that genetically modified foods were not safe.

He said the group was trying to make organic foods more competitive by driving up GM food prices through increased public concern and government regulation.

Marshall and fellow researcher Robin Warren won their Nobel Prize in 2005 for showing that a bacterium is the cause of most peptic ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine holding that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, or too much acid.

"If you say you are the Safe Food Foundation, that means you're implying that your food is safer or that every other bit of food that we're eating is not safe," Marshall said.

"If they were a really honest foundation, they would call themselves the anti-GM foundation.

"Because [organic] food is two or three times more expensive than normal food, the only way they can compete with normal food and GM food is to try to raise the price of that other food up to the organic food price."

But the organisation's director, Scott Kinnear, said Marshall was causing mischief in focusing on only one of the group's interests.

Kinnear said the Safe Food Foundation was also against radiation and chemicals used in both agriculture and the processing of food.

"We're very concerned about a lot of the artificial chemicals and technologies that are used in the production and processing of foods," he said.

"We think organic agriculture is vastly better for the environment. It's better for our land, for our soil systems; it's better for our water and air.

"We don't want to see GM agriculture through contamination wiping out organic agriculture: that's of grave concern to us; that's why we're supporting Steve's case to the extent that we have."

On Wednesday, Marsh announced he would appeal against the West Australian supreme court judgment against him.

The court ruled he could not sue neighbouring farmer Michael Baxter for damages after he lost his organic certification when GM canola from Baxter's farm allegedly contaminated his organic crops.