Hokkaido's intention to regulate the cultivation of GM crops is taking its shape. On 17 August 2004, Hokkaido made public the content of GM crop cultivation restrictions for outdoor trials during the R&D process at a meeting held by the investigative commission on conditions for implementation of GM crop field trials.

Hokkaido signalled the beginning of work on a "Food Safety and Security Bylaw (tentative name)," which includes restrictions on GM crop cultivation, at the Hokkaido council special budget committee in December 2003. However, since the bylaw will be enforced from April 2005, Hokkaido will regulate GM crop cultivation using the "guidelines concerning GM crop cultivation" during the transitional period.

The Food Safety Office of Hokkaido's Agricultural Policy Planning Department has been playing the central role in the formulation of the bylaw. Concerning restrictions on the cultivation of GM crops in the bylaw, cultivation on ordinary farmland and cultivation in outdoor experimental fields has been considered separately. The outline regarding cultivation on farmland has been made public, and includes clauses about requests to abandon the cultivation of GM crops. However, a separate review session has been set up to discuss experimental fields.

On 17 August 2004, the Food Safety Office presented a draft proposal titled "Conditions for the implementation of GM crop field trials" at the review session. The session concluded that GM crop trials should be approved by the Governor and also that an "assessment committee for GM crop field trials" should be established in order to deliberate on these matters.

In addition, the fundamental plan was to only allow experiments on GM crops developed by research institutions situated in Hokkaido. However the new proposal also includes GM crops which are developed by research institutions working in collaboration with research institutions situated in Hokkaido. Therefore it has opened its doors to GM crops that are developed by MAFF.

On 4 August 2004, The National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan (NCAC) announced that they have found genetically modified genes in over 60% of tofu products labelled "non-use of GM soybeans". The NCAC bought 29 different tofu products from major supermarkets in Tokyo and Kanagawa, and detected genes from GM soybeans in 18 products. Currently, there is no standard for measuring GM contamination ratios in the raw material, therefore no indication of contamination levels is shown on the packages.

Results of the MHLW investigation conducted in June 2002 showed over 20% of "non-use of GM soybeans" labelled products contained GM genes at that time. The GM contamination level is therefore definitely increasing. The GM contamination ratio will possibly continue to grow in seeds, and during cultivation and transportation as long as imported soybeans are used. However, GM genes were not detected in products labelled "100 % domestically produced (Japanese) soybeans".

In August 2003, Governor Yoshitsugu Kunimatsu of Shiga Prefecture announced at a press conference that he would "produce independent guidelines for the regulation of cultivation of GM crops" following the discovery of GM soy planted by the Informal Council on Bio-crops in Chuzu Town, Shiga Prefecture. This soy was mowed and ploughed under (BJ Oct 2003/Jan 2004). Since then, the laws concerning the Cartagena Protocol have come into force in Japan, and the governor therefore switched plans and decided to wait and see how regulations concerning GM crop cultivation would work out before working on independent guidelines.

On 20 August 2004, Shiga Prefecture finally announced its "guidelines concerning GM crop cultivation". However, the content of the guidelines is limited in scope, and only considers cultivation on farmland by requesting that farmers practice self-control, and does not include outdoor experimental trial sites, that really are the essential matter concerning GM crop cultivation. The guidelines have been very much watered down compared to the Governor's initial enthusiastic announcement.

At the 6 September 2004 meeting of the specialist investigation panel of the Food Safety Commission, agreement was reached on the report "BSE Countermeasures," which had largely been agreed upon at the previous meeting on 6 August 2004. The report was approved at a full meeting of the Commission on 9 September. This confirms the suspension of overall testing (of all cattle of all ages) for BSE. However, at the previous meeting, the member of the specialist panel, Kazuya Yamauchi spoke of the report of the European Commission, which states that, "Concerning the youngest cow infected with BSE found in Britain, it was confirmed positive at 17 months, and it is possible that it had accumulated abnormal prions by 13 months." The Food Safety Commission, in what may turn out to be an act of administrative suicide, appears to have intended to set the age for the start of BSE testing at 20 months without providing any scientific grounds for doing so.

On 26 August 2004, a meeting of the expert committee looking into the state of clinical research using human ES cells (advisory body to the Welfare Minister, Health Science Council) was held and, following on from the previous meeting, intensive discussion on the use of cells from aborted fetuses took place. The two incidents reported in the September 2004 issue of BJ were touched upon. Concerning the problem of the disposal of aborted fetuses as ordinary garbage, it was agreed that when the guidelines for selection of institutions that will provide the cells are drawn up, certain conditions should be stipulated in order to ensure that such hospitals are not included in the providing institutions. Concerning the investigation by the Japan Spinal Cord Foundation, it was decided that the committee member Kousaka Shinichi (Director of Neural Research, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry) should review overseas academic literature on the subject and submit his findings concerning the state of clinical research using human ES cells. In the end, the basic line on the use of ES cells from aborted fetuses remains unchanged and work is continuing steadily on the formulation of the guidelines.

Following the approval of the basic guideline on protection of personal data by the cabinet in April, the three ministries which have been reviewing the guidelines independently, MHLW, MEXT, and METI, held a joint meeting on 20 August 2004. The discussions included a review of the "Ethical Guidelines on the Human Genome Gene Sequencing Research," which are already being applied, and a discussion of how to comply with UNESCO's "International Declaration on Human Genetic Data." The necessity for enshrining these in law was pointed out. The aim of this is to make possible the collection of large amounts of "the ultimate personal data," genetic data, and translate this into profits for companies intending to move forward on genomic drug discovery and so on. In order to do this, it is necessary to have in place laws for protecting personal data.

Dow Chemical Japan (Dow AgroSciences) announced on 11 August 2004 the suspension of its field trials of GM corn (maize), which it had been carrying out at an isolated field of the National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, NIAES, at Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture since 14 June 2004. The variety being tested was the "herbicide resistant and insect protected corn TC6275" and the test was an appraisal of the impact on wildlife in conformity with the introduction of domestic laws in line with the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.

The reason for the suspension was that the non-GM seed used in the control trial was contaminated with GM seed, and the contaminating seed was a variety which has not received approval for cultivation in Japan. Moreover, the contamination level was high.

GM seed contamination was discovered on 7 July, when herbicide was sprayed on the control plants. If the control plants were all non-GM, they should all have been killed by the herbicide, but some of the corn was unaffected. This result was reported to the head office in the USA, which replied on 20 July that the non-GM seed had been contaminated with GM seed, and that the GM seed variety was "herbicide resistant and insect protected corn strain TC6275," which was not approved for cultivation in Japan. The contamination level was a high 15.6%.

Dow Chemical Japan reported these facts to NIAES on 23 July and to MAFF on 3 August. The plants were cut on 6 August and were all incinerated by the end of August.

It is still unclear why a non-approved corn variety could be contaminating seed at such a high level. This incident concerns the contamination of seed for a trial, but it is not unthinkable that corn seed produced in the USA and on sale in Japan might also be contaminated at a high level.

Until now, MAFF has hardly investigated imported seed at all, and has only made public the data from the investigation of the non-approved Starlink variety. In the USA, where serious seed contamination is occurring, an alliance of concerned scientists published a report on 23 February 2004 stating that genetic contamination in corn, soy and canola seed was becoming widespread, and that two-thirds of seed was already contaminated up to a 1% level (BJ April 2004 - not in English).

This latest incident highlights not only the seriousness of the genetic contamination, but the need for a strengthening of seed monitoring procedures at the time of import into Japan.