On 10 March 2016, the Ministry of the Environment called for public comment on the draft report finalised by the specialist committee on the situation regarding implementation of the Cartagena Law (formally known as the Law Concerning the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biological Diversity through Regulations on the Use of Living Modified Organisms) in accordance with the regulations in the Law.

The report was written by the specialist committee on living modified organisms of the natural environment subcommittee of the Central Environment Council. Firstly, concerning the situation regarding implementation of the Law, the report discussed the record of the law thus far, including the types of crops approved, implementation of public comments on the approvals and the reactions to them, and cases of inappropriate usage and the information supplied about them, and then presented the following points of issue.

In Type 1 Usage (use of crop cultivation, etc. in open fields), there were fewer applications for academic research than for commercial uses. The report said that it was therefore necessary to give evaluations based on the differences between research use and commercial use. In Type 2 Usage (use in closed systems such as factories), the report said that improvements were needed with regard to the manner of operation and provision of information.

In the response to new forms of usage of living modified organisms, the report stated that usages different from those that had been seen thus far might arise, such as commercial cultivation under certain management practices. Regarding Type 1 Usage of new GM microorganisms, for which there have been no applications thus far, the report said that it would be possible to accommodate these with existing knowledge and experience. It seems that this statement was made with genome editing technology in mind, indicating that the committee considers that new measures are unnecessary for this.

The report contains no mention of GM rapeseed (canola) volunteers in the wild or their expansion, which is currently becoming a nationwide issue, thus failing to reflect the reality that the Cartagena Law does not act to prevent genetic pollution. In food-producing countries, such as the US, increases in the use of pesticides as a measure against superweeds not killed by herbicides or superbugs that do not die when sprayed with insecticide are having adverse impacts on biodiversity, but there is no mention of the impacts on agriculture in these countries, and thus the content of the investigations for the report can only be considered as totally insufficient. Following public comment, the ministry is due to devise measures based on the draft report, but as things stand, it is hard to imagine that there will be a strengthening of regulations and it looks as if the drift will be towards deregulation.

The 11th GMO-free zone exchange conference was held in Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture, northern Japan on 5th and 6th March with around 300 people attending, including Tohoku region farmers and consumers from around the country. In resistance to the centrally controlled Great East Japan Earthquake Reconstruction Plan being pushed forward by the government, citizens in Miyagi Prefecture are currently proceeding with recovery and regeneration that are rooted in local areas, and it was confirmed that the ideas of the GMO-free zone movement are in common with those of the recovery movement by local citizens. There is also great apprehension that TPP (the Trans-Pacific Economic Partnership Agreement) will result in large amounts of GM foods being imported into Japan and a conference declaration that stated that the resistance movement against such imports is precisely the same as the GMO-free zone movement was adopted.