Either a particular GM crop is safe and everyone can eat it or it isn't and no one should eat it. The answer to that question doesn't depend on who is asking it. I (ignoring possible political interference and distortion which is a concern) consider people who spend their lives studying the question are far better equipped than me to answer it and I will accept their answer.
Ahem. This is all nice in theory, but in the world we're living in, it is not true. There are degrees in food safety, and the acceptable risk depends a lot on "who".
If you take a starving rural ethiopian population with a very degraded life expectancy and bad to no access to clean water, GM crop is not only safer than the water they drink, it will probably not make their overall food quality worse, and will probably, if it has an economical edge (I am not saying that it has, I actually doubt it, but that argument has been used before because it reaches its target), be beneficial for their life expectancy.
If you take a healthy western family with a long life expectancy, good sanitary conditions, high income, access to a large variety of food, then it might represent an added risk with no tangible benefits.
All of that being said, I do not think the debate regarding GM crops is about the immediate risk upon consumption, but more about a list of side effects that are not linked to the food quality in itself:
- Contamination by dissemination of other crops and the resulting intellectual property " infrigements" by neighbour farmers and worsens the conclusions of any future discovery that the GM crop is bad in a way of an other (if it causes cancer but dos not disseminate, you can stop buying it. If it has alrteady disseminated, good luck).
- The general idea that someone can patent a living thing, which make me sick to my stomach.
- The unknown effects on the surrounding ecosystem(s).