Conclusion of the Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol (See BJ February 2017) was approved by the Japanese cabinet on 5 December 2017. The Supplementary Protocol was established at the Tenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP10) and the Fifth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity Serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (MOP 5) held in Nagoya in 2010 and demands liability, redress and restoration from development companies and others when living GM organisms have adverse effects on biodiversity. The protocol is to be issued once 40 countries have signed up, and since Japan is the 40th country to do so the protocol will be issued on 5 March 2018. Meetings of parties to the Supplementary Protocol will be held from the next COP.

On 28 November 2018, MAFF announced a strengthening of monitoring of imported crops from specified countries to strengthen the import monitoring of unapproved GM crops. The specified countries and crops are papaya from Taiwan, and cotton from India and Greece. These are all regions where there are concerns that unapproved crop cultivation and distribution is occurring.

On 29 November 2017, MAFF announced the results of a survey of wild volunteer GM cotton plants conducted between early November and early December 2016. The survey targeted the surrounding areas of the premises of a total of seven facilities; three commercial warehouses, three feed plants and one oil plant. Of these, volunteers were confirmed in the surroundings of a feed plant. Volunteers were confirmed for three successive years, one sample in FY2014 and four samples having been discovered in FY2015. MAFF explains that since the volunteers found this time were in a different place from those discovered previously, the volunteers had germinated and grown from newly spilled seed.