Hiroshima University, in collaboration with Kewpie, has developed a chicken that lays eggs that cannot produce the allergen ovomucoid. A clinical trial using the eggs is to be conducted at the Sagamihara National Hospital. Instead of CRISPR-Cas9, the chicken genome editing technology uses the TALEN technology, a Hiroshima University specialty.
(Yomiuri Shimbun Online 2023/11/24)

Farmdu Group, which sells agricultural products directly in Gunma Prefecture and Tokyo, purchased about 400 genome-edited red sea bream juveniles from Regional Fish Institute Ltd. in late October 2023 with the aim of cultivating and selling them. Many of them died while growing, leaving only about 20 remaining. However, the company plans to purchase about 600 more fish and sell them at its food stations and other direct sales outlets.
(Nikkei Shimbun Online 2023/12/6)

On December 25, the notification to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japanese flatfish, the third type of genome-edited fish after red sea bream and pufferfish, was completed. After the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries accept the notification, it will be possible to sell the fish on the market. The Japanese flatfish, developed by Regional Fish Institute, Ltd., was engineered to be abnormally fat by disrupting the leptin gene, a hormone that suppresses appetite.
(Regional Fish Institute, Ltd. 2023/12/25)

Mitsui Chemicals Crop & Life Solutions, Inc., a subsidiary of Mitsui Chemicals, has opened a laboratory in Tokyo to develop biological pesticides using GM technology. The company and Tohoku University have already established a research institute for the co-creation of biological solutions at the university, and the aim is to stimulate the development of biological pesticides.
(Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun 2023/11/27)

Sales of alternative meat, soy-meat foods, which have driven food tech forward, are plummeting. According to research firm intage, the soy meat food market continued to expand, from 460 million yen in 2017 to 4.2 billion yen in 2022. This year, however, sales fell 24% to 2.8 billion yen through October 2023.
(Nikkei Shimbun Online 2023/12/8)