On 27 February 2006, deliberations on the virus resistant GM papaya began in the GM food specialist panel of the Food Safety Commission. The deliberations were closed to the public as were the GM high-lysine maize deliberations in January. This GM papaya 55-1 was jointly developed by Cornel University, University of Hawaii and The Upjohn Company, and it has increased resistance to papaya ringspot virus (PRSV). The papaya producers association in Hawaii has previously negotiated directly with Monsanto (who have many patents for genetic engineering) in order to commercialise the papaya.

GM papaya cultivation started in Hawaii, USA, in 1998, and field trials have been conducted in an isolated field on Ishigaki Island, Japan, in 1999. An application for approval of the papaya for food use was made in the same year, but not granted. The safety assessment was considered inadequate and submission of additional documentation was required. (See BJ April 2003, July 2003)

Most of the papaya currently cultivated in Hawaii is this hybrid GM papaya "Rainbow", but for the Japanese market, the conventional variety "Kapoho" is exported. If the Food Safety Commission approves the GM papaya, only the "Rainbow" variety would be cultivated in Hawaii. This would also be the very first raw GM food to become available in Japan.

In the Philippines and Thailand, where illegal cultivation of the GM papaya has been an issue in the past. Moreover, in December 2002, a Dutch biologist team lead by Gijs A Kleter published a research paper concerning the appearance of allergenic proteins in inserted genes in the GM papaya.

Imabari City in Ehime Prefecture has taken a step toward regulating GM crop cultivation. A draft, which is promotes organic agriculture and safety of local agricultural products, is being prepared for submission to the city assembly in June. (Mainichi Shimbun Ehime edition 2006/02/26)

Niigata Prefectural Agricultural Institute in Nagaoka City has started to move towards the development of GM blue lilies. For fiscal 2006, the prefectural government has budgeted an annual development grant of 15 million yen, and will work toward commercialisation in 2012. If the GM lily is developed, it will be the third GM blue flower variety after the GM blue carnation and the GM blue rose developed by Suntory Ltd (see BJ Nov. 2005). Niigata Prefecture was once the primary lily producing prefecture in Japan, but recently has fallen to third place following Saitama Prefecture and Kochi Prefecture. Niigata aims to recover lost territory through commercialisation of the blue GM lily. (Mainichi Shimbun Niigata edition 2006/02/28)

The MHLW expert committee (an advisory body to the Welfare Minister, Health Science Council) which has been preparing guidelines for the use of human stem cells in clinical research since January 2002, held a meeting on 22 February 2006, at which the guidelines were at last finalized. (See BJ March 2005) Public comments will now be solicited and it is expected that the guidelines will be in full operation around August 2006. A double screening process, by both a national body and by the research institute, and the procurement of informed consent are mandated by the guidelines, but the most important point is that the issue over which the committee was split down the middle, stem cells from aborted foetuses, has been decoupled from the issue of the use of human stem cells in research. Thus, the guidelines cover only the use of somatic stem cells in clinical research. MHLW appears to have decided that it is better to get some kind of guidelines finalized in order to open the way for the use of stem cells in regenerative medicine rather than to prolong the discussions to try to finalize an all-inclusive set of guidelines.

A meeting of the MEXT working group on the formulation of guidelines for the production and use of clone human embryos, human embryos artificially produced outside the body using cloning techniques, was held on 25 July 2005. (See BJ Aug 2005, Sept 2005)At the meeting, it was decided as a basic policy decision to ban the donation of unfertilised ova from members of a research team, their spouses or close family when procuring ova needed for the research. The exact definition of "close family" will be decided at a later date. Ethical problems concerning Hwang Woo-suk's human embryonic stem cell research team at Seoul University (ROK) have been coming to light recently, including the fact that a woman researcher in the team had donated unfertilised ova, and the fact that unfertilised ova had been the object of cash transactions at the donor facility. There have been discussions at MEXT concerning donations by people related to research teams following this incident. MEXT's stance towards human cloned embryo research is that for the time being Japan should proceed positively with the research within a properly defined institutional framework.

GM crops approved for open field cultivation (Type 1 usage) (Biodiversity Impact Assessment Investigative Commission)
Crop	Trait	Application (Developer)	Name	Approval Date*
Maize	Insect resistance and herbicide tolerance	Dow Chemicals Japan	TC6275	15 Feb. 2006
Canola (Rapeseed)	Herbicide tolerance	Monsanto Japan	MON89788	15 Feb. 2006
* Technically, approval is granted after public comments have been accepted.

Because the essential amino acid lysine is only present in cereals in small quantities, lysine has been added to animal feed maize. A high-lysine GM maize has been developed and the Food Safety Commission has begun the approval process. The maize variety used is a feed dent corn, but approval is being requested not only for use as feed but also for human consumption. Thus, deliberations concerning the maize's safety for human consumption have begun in the GM food specialist committee. (See BJ March 2006)

This "LY038 trait" GM maize, developed under a joint venture, known as "Renessen LLC", between Monsanto and Cargill, has already been approved in the USA. The application in Japan was filed by Monsanto.

A gene for a lysine synthesizing enzyme from bacteria is used in this GM maize, raising the level of lysine in the maize kernel when the enzyme takes effect. Not only does the lysine level rise, but the level of metabolites involved in its decomposition, saccharopine and alpha-aminoadipic acid, also rise. When a particular constituent substance has been increased through genetic manipulation, "substantial equivalence" no longer applies, and the conventional notions of safety assessment are therefore no longer applicable.

At the Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Institute in Australia, when a kidney bean gene was introduced into pea a change in the protein occurred. When the three-dimensional structure of a protein changes, the polysaccharide (sugar) chains around the protein change, and there is a possibility that changes will occur in the genetic network. It is possible that similar changes could also occur in this GM maize.(See BJ Jan. 2006 Trend article - not translated into English: Protein becomes allergen following genetic engineering [Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2005, vol 53, 9023-9030]).

This application for approval has been made for both feed use and for human consumption. Dent corn is generally used only for feed, and is used in a processed form for human consumption. However, the possibility that it might be consumed as unprocessed food through genetic pollution caused by inter-crossing or contamination with sweet corn cannot be ruled out. How far will the assessment process go in assessing such risks of unprocessed consumption?

The GM maize now under discussion has not only the above problems, but also as the kanamycin resistance gene is used as the antibiotic resistance gene and the ampicillin resistance gene is also present in the plasmid, there is also the fear of increase in antibiotic resistant bacteria. Further, the cauliflower mosaic virus, which has been suggested is possibly carcinogenic, is used as the promoter gene.