One of the pillars of the Japanese government's economic growth strategy is the introduction of high technology. Along with artificial intelligence (AI), Japan is promoting biotechnology, genome editing technology being an important element of biotechnology. Intellectual property rights (IP) hold the key to the promotion of high technology, and along with patent rights, one of the most important pillars of IP is the "plant patent" Plant Variety Protection and Seed Act (PVPS Act, also known as the Seeds and Seedlings Act), which provides for the protection of new plant varieties.

The PVPS Act was originally created and enforced as domestic law under the UPOV Convention (Union internationale pour la protection des obtentions végétales = International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants), and its basis lies in this international treaty. This international alliance began in 1961 with just four countries, but it started to gain significant power with the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the emergence of genetically modified crops. In response to these new circumstances, the treaty was drastically revised in 1991, and has gained significant power as IP strategies have moved forward worldwide.

The PVPS Act is about to undergo further major changes in response to the economic growth strategies of the Takaichi administration. The current PVPS Act was revised in 2020, by which time the rights of developers were already strengthened. Now, those rights are about to receive another boost. This revision of the PVPS Act (the New PVPS Act) is being made in line with the appearance of a new bill, the Act on the Promotion of the Breeding of Important Varieties and the Production of Seeds and Seedlings Thereof. The bill, commonly known as the "Bill on varieties responding to climate change, etc." positions as important the development and promotion of crop varieties having traits such as high temperature tolerance, disease resistance and high yield. But the development of such varieties has been in progress for some time, so why is it now necessary to create a new law to promote them?

The reason is that the government aims to develop new varieties using genome editing and other genetic engineering techniques and to protect them under intellectual property rights. This is the purpose of the new bill and the amendment to the PVPS Act, which the current administration views as part of its economic growth strategy. For this reason, the bill gives preferential treatment to large private companies such as multinational corporations, shifting the development capabilities of local governments to the private sector, and curtailing the development capabilities of small and medium-sized seed and seedling manufacturers who have worked hard in their communities thus far.

The development of new varieties is currently planned by prefectural governments and carried out by private companies, which are allowed to use cutting-edge research facilities such as those possessed by the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO). The new varieties developed are required to be registered. In this way, the private sector is given considerable advantages in the development of new varieties. The purpose of the private sector's use of genetic manipulation, such as genome editing, can be said to be to gain control of the world's seeds through intellectual property.

When the new law is enacted, the PVPS Act will be revised at the same time. The point of the revision is to strengthen the control over seeds and includes (1) a 10-year extension of breeders' rights. The breeder's right is the right to develop new plant varieties. The period will be 35 years for ordinary plants and 40 years for trees, an as-yet unparalleled length of time. For ordinary plants, the period is 25 years in the EU and 20 years in the United States. (2) Strict measures will be taken to prevent the loss of new plant varieties. The government says it will strictly monitor the export of new plant varieties overseas and support lawsuits filed by breeders' rights holders. The Japanese government is now lobbying Asian countries that are not yet affiliated to UPOV to try to force them to join, which has drawn criticism from Asian people.

The new act and amendments to the PVPS Act are expected to come into effect on December 1 of this year.

On May 28, the Consumer Affairs Agency held a meeting of the Food Sanitation Standards Council's subcommittee on newly developed foods and announced a draft guideline on the safety of cell-cultured foods (2 articles). This marks a major advance in the commercialization of cell-cultured foods. If the guideline is established, it will help promote the commercialization in Japan of cell-cultured foods, previously approved only in a limited number of countries, including Singapore and the United States. On the same day, hearings were held with four consumer organizations, all of which called for individual case examinations due to safety concerns.