In the Land of Sushi, Lab Tomato Strikes Out

Pity the “transgenic” tomato. It has become a marketing disaster on both sides of the Pacific, and a cautionary tale for Japanese biotechnology.

It began life in a California laboratory as a miracle product, a tomato bioengineered to be tasty but slow to spoil. It was the first gene-spliced food to win approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And in 1994, when Kirin Brewery Co., Japan’s top beer maker, acquired the Japanese rights to the Flavr-Savr tomato from Calgene Inc. of Davis, Calif., it seemed like a sure-fire winner.

Kirin quickly won approval from Japan’s Health and Welfare Ministry to market the tomato here, and set to work crossbreeding it with Japanese species to produce the pink color, particular taste and compact growth characteristics that consumers and farmers here prefer.

But before the tomato got near the supermarket shelves, a Japanese consumer group that opposes genetically engineered food threatened to boycott every Kirin product--including its beer--if the company dared to put its brave new product on the market.

Kirin pulled the offending vegetable. In a recent interview, company spokesmen politely avoided comment on the boycott threat, but said Kirin will not try to market its tomato--or any other genetically modified food--until and unless the Japanese public is prepared to accept it.

“Until we resolve the taste, color and growth issues, we can’t sell it,” explained spokesman Hirotaka Ishikawa. “In addition, we need to have the public’s understanding. Right now, people feel resistance even when they hear the words ‘genetic engineering.’ ”

But Kirin has by no means abandoned bioengineering. It is quietly continuing efforts to produce a genetically superior tomato--even though Calgene’s Flavr-Savr has been a dud with U.S. shoppers.

Meanwhile, Kirin’s “agribio business division” has engineered a virus-resistant chrysanthemum, which is undergoing environmental-safety testing. And its pharmaceutical division is marketing two genetically engineered drugs that are injected rather then ingested and have drawn no protests.

As goes Kirin, so goes Japan. Alarmed that Japan is lagging far behind the U.S. and Europe in biotechnology, and determined to become a world-class competitor in bioscience, the Japanese government is pouring money into research and development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and technologies to improve crops, pharmaceuticals, medicine, environmental protection and industrial processes.

The budget for biotech research for the fiscal year that begins next month is about $2.6 billion--up 11% over that of the current fiscal year despite the biting recession here. The budget spreads money and projects among key corporations and at least five ministries and agencies to ensure bureaucratic and corporate support.

The national policy of focusing on biotechnology--which is expected to win Cabinet approval next month--is reminiscent of the way postwar Japan targeted such strategic industries as steel and autos to nurture them into international competitors.

However, according to Japanese media reports, the new biotech strategy also is aimed at creating 70,000 to 80,000 new jobs by expanding the domestic market twenty-fivefold by 2010, from its current level of about $8.7 billion a year.

Although Japanese scientists are on the cutting edge with such biotech methods as cell fusion and fermentation, officials of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said, they lag their U.S. and European competitors in gene splicing. Estimates of how far behind they are range from 18 months to more than five years. So many vital genetic methods and materials have been patented by Westerners that Japanese companies face paying steep usage fees until they can catch up with proprietary genetic inventions of their own.

One of the few genetically modified agricultural products that has made it to market in Japan is a lavender-blue carnation jointly developed by Suntory Ltd. and Florigene, an Australian firm. The carnation, called “Moondust,” gets its blue tint from a petunia gene. It is grown in Australia and imported into Japan in the form of cut flowers. Suntory says it sold 200,000 of the flowers last year for up to $3.50 each.

No one objected.

Now the government is mounting a public education campaign to persuade the Japanese public that gene-spliced foods also are unobjectionable.

Powerful anti-GMO farm lobbies, along with consumer and environmental groups, are pitted against some of Japan’s largest agribusinesses, which are developing such genetically modified products as rice, melons, tomatoes, strawberries and cucumbers and would like to bring them to market.

A Lack of Incentive?

Government officials are worried that unless the prevailing negative attitude toward GMOs can be changed, the biotech industry will have little incentive to pursue research and development and Japan will fall even further behind in the vital technology.

“If private companies find that, like Kirin, they can develop a product and pass all the legally required safety checks but then can’t sell it, we’re in trouble,” said Makoto Tabata, who works on promoting biotech research in the Innovative Technology Division of the agriculture ministry. “They will lose the motivation to invest.”

Ministry representatives are traveling the country for lectures, symposiums and meetings with farm, consumer and environmental groups. The ministry has also put out a glossy brochure to dispel doubts about GMO foods. The pamphlet features easily understood explanations of the science involved and cute graphics showing a forlorn-looking tomato--delicious but disease-prone--that has its bad genes replaced and becomes a hardy, tasty and smiling new breed.

The pamphlet also confronts such questions as “Doesn’t it go against nature’s wisdom for humans to recombine and change the genes of other organisms?” (The ministry’s answer: No. Humans have been altering their foods continually over the 10,000-year history of agriculture, and genetic engineering is merely a new technique toward the same ends.)

Both Japanese and foreign food producers are pinning their hopes on the public education campaign, which they see as critical to countering the “scare techniques” used by environmental, farmer and consumer groups crusading against genetic engineering.

“Genetically modified foods had an unfortunate debut in Japan,” said the agriculture ministry’s Kazuhiko Kawamura, arguing that the first products introduced here had qualities such as pest resistance that were beneficial to farmers but held no particular charm for consumers.

“People do not yet have the information they need,” said Dennis Kitch, director for Japan of the U.S. Grains Council, who called biotechnology “potentially the most important development in agriculture in the last 2,000 years.” The grains lobby is also trying to get out its message that genetically engineered foods are not only safe but also highly desirable because of increased crop yields; less need for agricultural chemical use; and, soon, health-promoting, nutritional or medicinal qualities that will appeal to consumers.

Keeping a Low Profile

Moreover, a new generation of “nutraceutical” products now under development--for example, a plant that produces edible insulin for injection-dependent diabetics--could quickly change public perceptions, Kitch said.

A number of Japanese blue-chip companies apparently are hoping for such an outcome--but keeping a low profile in the meantime. Among them are Toyota, which is doing research on genetically engineered sweet potatoes but declined to discuss the details, and Japan Tobacco, which is working on GMO rice. The formerly state-owned tobacco giant wouldn’t comment on how much it has invested in the research, but industry sources put the figure at about $1 billion.

Another is Kagome, Japan’s premier tomato-products firm, which is working on its own genetically engineered tomatoes that would be better than conventional breeds for juice and processed tomato products. (Kirin’s tomato, by contrast, is meant to be eaten raw.) Kagome has not even applied for the Health and Welfare Ministry’s product-safety approval for fear of incurring consumer displeasure.

“If we apply for permission, we’re concerned that the public would be left with the misunderstanding that we plan to market it, so we will not go that far and will stop at this stage,” said spokesman Mikio Sugimoto. “Kagome equals tomatoes in Japanese consumers’ minds. If we invite distrust of our tomatoes, it could threaten our very survival.”

Japanese consumer antipathy is not based on religious objections to “playing God” with genetics. “Our gods are very flexible,” quipped Shimahashi.

“There’s just a feeling that manipulating genes is unpleasant,” Sugimoto concluded. “Maybe that will change. . . . [GMO foods] are 100% safe, but people don’t feel comfortable with them. This is very human.”

What biofood backers call human irrationality isn’t limited to consumers; corporate psychology plays a role as well. In this consensus-oriented society, Japanese companies tend to “walk in lockstep,” as the Japanese saying goes, afraid not only of lagging behind but also of marching out too far ahead of public opinion, customers or even competitors.

“Kirin and Japan Tobacco and the others are all looking around wondering who will be the one to put [a GMO food] on the market,” the agriculture ministry’s Tabata said. “No one wants to be the first.”

If no private company will risk belling the GMO cat, the Japanese government just might do it for them. It has embarked on an ambitious project to produce a gene-spliced breed of rice that will be tasty and pest-resistant, and hopes to have a marketable product in about three years, Tabata said.

“We want to develop a rice that can be put on the market,” Tabata said. “If the government does it first, the private companies will pluck up their courage.”

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Chiaki Kitada in The Times’ Tokyo bureau contributed to this report.

* FOOD FIGHT: The U.S. is watching intently as Japan debates the future of bioengineered food. A1