Environmental campaigning group Greenpeace on Tuesday urged Meiji Seika Kaisha Ltd to name the companies and products using a sweetener made with an unapproved GMO additive. Meiji Seika, Japan’s biggest chocolate maker, has halted sale of its potentially lucrative GF2 sugar alternative. On the advice of the authorities, the company last week announced a voluntary recall of GF2 and six types of diet food containing it.

Japan, the last major importer in Asia still holding out against genetically-modified corn for food use, could soon be buying more GMO material from US farmers as record prices force it to turn to cheaper modified grains. The world’s largest corn importer has long bought GMO corn for animal feed, but buys only a trickle for human food use. But food makers are caught between US farmers demanding a higher premium for GMO-free corn and Japanese grocers and consumers, the last in Asia still resisting modified crops after South Korean processors last month bought GMO corn.

The Japanese company that created the world’s first genetically modified blue roses said Monday it will start selling them next year. Suntory Ltd., also a major whisky distiller, hopes to sell several hundred thousand blue roses a year, company spokesman Kazumasa Nishizaki said. ”As its price may be a bit high, we are targeting demand for luxurious cut flowers, such as for gifts,” he said.

Japan has no law regulating the import of such food products, and it will be virtually impossible to differentiate between cloned and regular beef unless they are labeled. With this in mind, it is essential that Japan draw up its own distribution and safety assessment systems.

Japanese consumers have written to Victoria and New South Wales in Australia, to protest against the two states’ decision to start allowing genetically modified crops: The No! GMO Campaign would like to take this opportunity to strongly protest against the decision that your state has taken to cancel the moratorium against GM crops. In October 2007, The No! GMO Campaign submitted a request to your states that the GM moratorium should be kept in place. This request was signed by 155 different organizations, representing some 2,900,000 consumers

Soybean farmers in the U.S., the world’s largest producer of the oilseed, will demand higher premiums for non-genetically modified beans next year and likely only supply the crops under contract, an exporters group said. U.S. farmers are planting fewer acres of non-GMO soybeans that are more expensive to produce and lower-yielding than genetically modified varieties, Dan Duran, chief executive officer of the U.S. Soybean Export Council, said in an interview.

On July 7, 2007, NO! GMO Campaign published the findings of a survey of spilled GM canola found growing in Japan. The survey was carried out from March 2007 onwards by citizens in 43 out of the total of 47 prefectures in Japan. In total, 1617 samples were tested and of these 37 showed up as GMO positive. A similar survey was also conducted in South Korea. The samples were collected not only around ports where canola (oilseed rape) is imported, and around factories where canola oil is extracted, as well as along canola transportation routes, but also in some urban areas and on farmland.

Mitsui & Co., Japan’s second-biggest trading company, will buy a 25 percent stake in Multigrain AG, a Sao Paulo-based grain handler, to secure increased supplies of soybeans from Brazil. [...] The purchase would help the company expand access to non- genetically modified soybeans, which Japanese consumers prefer. The U.S., which supplies about 75 percent of Japan’s soybean imports, has almost doubled the percentage of genetically modified beans it produces to 91 percent as of this year, from 54 percent in 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

On July 7, 2007, NO! GMO Campaign published the findings of a survey of spilled GM canola found growing in Japan. The survey was carried out from March 2007 onwards by citizens in 43 out of the total of 47 prefectures in Japan. In total, 1617 samples were tested and of these 37 showed up as GMO positive. A similar survey was also conducted in South Korea.

Research reported this week by three different groups shows that normal skin cells can be reprogrammed to an embryonic state in mice. The race is now on to apply the surprisingly straightforward procedure to human cells. If researchers succeed, it will make it relatively easy to produce cells that seem indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells, and that are genetically matched to individual patients. There are limits to how useful and safe these would be for therapeutic use in the near term, but they should quickly prove a boon in the lab.