The Science Council of Japan's "Committee on the State of Assisted Reproduction Medicine", considering the pros and cons of surrogate motherhood finalized its final report at a meeting on 7 March 2008. (See BJ March 2008) The report makes the following five recommendations, among others.

1. For the time being, surrogacy is banned in principle. A new law, entitled "Law on Regulating Assisted Repromed" (tentative title), should be written in order to entrust regulation to the law.
2. Trial implementations (clinical trials) will be approved in exceptions and under strict management.
3. It will be necessary to establish a public management organization for clinical trials in order to carry out the work of registration, follow-up studies, evaluation, and so on in an appropriate manner. Trials can then be implemented on this basis for a certain time. If there are no especial medical or ethical issues remaining at the end of that period, then the ban on surrogacy should be totally lifted, but with certain guidelines.
4. For-profit surrogacy should be subject to severe penalties, persons liable to penalties at present being the agent or mediator, the client, and the medical practitioner.
5. Concerning the parent-child relationship, the "birth mother is the mother" rule should be applied to surrogacy, implementation overseas and clinical trials being treated likewise.

There are still plenty of tasks to be completed: the enactment of legislation, the establishment and management of a public body to take charge of clinical trials, and so on, but the basic conclusion has been reached with one year and two months of discussion.

Table 2. GM crops approved for open field cultivation (Type 1 usage) (Biodiversity Impact Assessment Investigative Commission)
Crop	Trait	Application (Developer)	Name	Approval Date*
Maize	Heat resistant alpha-amylase production	Syngenta Seeds	3272, OECD UI: SYN-E3272-5	28 February 2008
Maize	Insect resistance to two orders of insect + herbicide tolerance	Syngenta Seeds	Bt11 x MIR604 OECD UI: SYN-BT011 x SYN-IR604-5	28 February 2008
Maize	Insect resistance to two orders of insect + two kinds of herbicide tolerance	Syngenta Seeds	Bt11 x MIR604 x GA21, OECD UI: SYN-BT011-1 x SYN-IR604-5 x MON-00021-9	28 February 2008
Rapeseed	Herbicide tolerance	BayerCropscience	OXY-235, OECD UI: ACS-BN011-5	28 February 2008
Cotton	Herbicide tolerance	BayerCropscience	GHB614, OECD UI: BCS-GH002-5	28 February 2008
* Technically, approval is granted after public comments have been accepted.