Dow Jones | October 20, 1999 | Chester Dawson in the Far Eastern Economic Review
TOKYO - Confronted with two soybeans that are nearly identical in appearance, the pigeon in a recent Japanese television commercial approaches warily. Which to choose? It makes a quick meal of one bean - and that's the right one for Mother Nature, according to the voice-over.
Not all beans are alike, the voice tells viewers. Some, it warns, according to the story, are genetically modified organisms - GMOs for short.
The story says there is a growing source of controversy not just in Japan but worldwide as growers and consumer advocates debate whether they pose any long-term health risks. In August, Japan ruled that certain products made from laboratory-designed plants should be labeled as such by early 2001. And that has given makers of undoctored foods an obvious marketing opportunity.
Shouichi Tajiri, spokesman for Kume Quality Products, which ran the pigeon ad, was quoted as saying, "Consumers are becoming increasingly uneasy with GMOs, so we just wanted to let them know our products are all natural."
The ads were aimed at promoting Kume's brand of natto, a popular fermented soybean dish.
Europe, too, has moved toward mandatory labeling, but the stakes are particularly high in Japan, which imports 60% of its total food needs.
One-third of these imports come from the United States, where more than half this year's soybean and corn crop was grown from bioengineered seeds.
Little wonder, then, that Tokyo's plans to make GMO labeling mandatory have become the latest addition to Washington's long list of trade disputes with Japan. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman and U.S. Ambassador Thomas Foley have made little headway in persuading Tokyo to reconsider the labeling requirement.
One U.S. government official was quoted as saying, "We're losing business as a result of this policy. To be frank, we're a bit stymied."
Many Japanese have never heard of genetically modified products, but food companies are growing worried that once they do, finicky consumers may start shunning them. The head of the Consumer Union of Japan's "No! GMO" campaign, Setsuko Yasuda, was cited asserting that too many questions remain unanswered about the potential risks of gene-altered foods. On behalf of 14 local activist groups, her group earlier this month published an open letter to U.S. farmers and food producers, urging them to stop exporting genetically altered products to Japan.
The appeal is, the story says, unlikely to find a receptive audience in the U.S., where farm groups see the anti-GMO movement as, at best, misguided and ill-informed about biotechnology issues. Some even suspect the mandatory labeling drive is a thinly veiled form of protectionism.
Dennis Kitch, Tokyo office chief of the partially government-funded U.S. Grain Council, was quoted as saying, "It's intended to stigmatize imports."
Japanese officials, for their part, deny that politics played any role or that the labeling requirement is a trade barrier in disguise. Kazuhiko Kawamura, an Agriculture Ministry official in charge of the food-labeling issue, says the government was simply responding to consumer demand for greater disclosure.
