The exotic species countermeasures department (wildlife section, Nature Conservation Bureau, Ministry of the Environment), which serves as the secretariat for the investigative panel on genome editing technology, etc. and the Cartagena laws held two meetings, on August 7 and 20, 2018 (see BJ August 2018), at which the genome editing technique of simply cleaving DNA, at present the most widely used technique, was accepted as being outside the scope of the Cartagena laws. This is in contrast with the EU, and as it is indicates the possibility that the greater part of genome technology carried out in Japan will not be subject to any environmental impact assessment.