Calling on the Japanese Government to Strictly Regulate All Gene-edited Organisms

22 May 2021

Consumers Union of Japan

22 May is the International Day of Biodiversity, established by the United Nations. Although this day should be a day to celebrate the abundance of nature, in May this year, the free distribution of gene-edited tomato seedlings has begun in Japan, threatening biodiversity. In addition, gene-edited rice and potatoes are being grown on a trial basis, and there is even a new move to approve fish developed in this way.

Agrifood related social controversies tend to involve scientific issues and advocacy groups increasingly turn to citizen science (CS), participatory data taking by regular people, to produce health and environmental data. A common assumption is that CS’s value lies in the data produced, and its volume and quality decide its persuasive power. This article describes participatory monitoring of genetically engineered rapeseed (canola) in Japan to suggest that social movements can leverage CS not only for the production of scientific data but also as occasions for recruitment, political awareness-raising, and collaboration with other civic organizations. The article proposes a new framework for understanding CS–social movement relations that is multi-actor (vs. expert–laypeople dyad); process-oriented (vs. product/data-oriented); and long-term (vs. one-shot and isolated data taking). There is an increasing awareness of the diversity of CS. Even those that are led by grassroots organizations have multiple and shifting uses of data and foster varying political subjectivity among participants. The proposed framework helps to understand the dynamics that shape such heterogeneous pathways of CS.

Activists from Japanese consumer organizations and farmers’ groups protested again against the unregulated GABA tomato on Earth Day 22 April 2021. Sanatech Seed is introducing its genome-edited tomato this spring without any safety checks and no mandatory labelling. “It is a genetically modified food and consumers have no idea if it is safe or not, and no way of avoiding it, once it reaches the market,” said one of the speakers at the protest action outside Sanatech’s offices in central Tokyo. This is the second effort to stop the release of the GMO tomato, which is said to be engineered to have “high levels of GABA” without much research to support the claims. Consumers Union of Japan, the No! GMO Campaign and other groups want to stop the introduction before it is too late.

Wide range of associated risks

3 Februar 2021 / Japan granted approval in January for the first ‘CRISPR tomatoes’ to be used in food production. There are plans to distribute the genetically engineered (GE) plants to home gardeners. The tomatoes contain a much higher concentration of a plant compound (GABA) compared to those derived from conventional breeding. This is an example of how it is possible to bring about major changes in the composition of food plants without inserting additional genes. The cultivation and consumption of the tomatoes are, however, associated with a wide range of risks.

Tomato is designed to have biological effects on consumers – but there's no safety data or GMO labelling

A gene-edited tomato that is intended to have a biological effect on consumers has been approved in Japan for commercial sale – without safety checks or GMO labelling. The tomato is genetically engineered to contain higher than usual amounts of GABA, a substance that is said to have the ability to lower blood pressure.

In what may have been the world’s first protest against a genome edited GMO food product, the GABA tomato, activists from Consumers Union of Japan and the No! GMO Campaign gathered outside Sanatech’s offices in central Tokyo, Japan on 23 December 2020.

* GABA = Gamma-AminoButyric Acid

On December 11, Japan's first genome-edited food item obtained a green light for domestic sales. This was the high-GABA accumulated tomato, the "Sicilian Rouge High GABA," developed by Professor Hiroshi Ezura and his team at Tsukuba University. The green light was obtained when, on December 11, Tsukuba Universityfs venture company Sanatech Seed notified and presented data to MAFF, and notified MHLW. Having these accepted by the two ministries completes the necessary procedure for commercialization of the tomato. As genome-edited foods do not require an environmental impact assessment or safety screening as food or feed, the reality is that it is possible to distribute the food in this way, and that the food will appear on our dining tables without any labelling.

This is a brief report on the current status of new and emerging GM technologies, including genome editing, in Japan. We also want to highlight the debate and protests that are ongoing regarding such technologies. Consumers Union of Japan has concluded that we do not want to be unknowingly exposed to food artificially created in this way, and that we do not need such genome-edited food.

Request to cease use of pre-harvest glyphosate in soybeans and reply to questions regarding its use

In response to our questionnaire dated March 17 2020, you responded on March 27 by e-mail, but you did not answer our questions 1 to 4.

Domestic agriculture is in a deep crisis due to trade agreements such as the TPP, the EU-Japan EPA, and the US-Japan FTA. We believe that the pursuit of safety in order to compete with cheap imported agricultural products is the best way to increase confidence in domestic agriculture and to survive. Many of the JAs under your organization are actively reducing the use of pesticides and pursuing environmentally friendly agriculture. Not only do we want you to produce safe agricultural products, but we also want to support domestic agriculture, which is responsible for Japan’s food self-sufficiency, and we worry about the health of the producers who are spraying pesticides.

An article appeared in Tokyo Shimbun on January 24, 2020 that reported on the use of genome editing to exterminate invasive fish. The research is being pushed forward as a study by the National Research Institute of Aquaculture.

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Consequently, Consumers Union of Japan wrote to the research center on January 29 to express our concern and to ask a number of questions. We consider that this type of genome editing can have a large impact on related species, the natural environment, as well as the entire ecosystem. This impact due to the release of genome-edited fish must be analysed very carefully. On February 17 we received a reply from the research center.