Japanese Choke on American Biofood

The video whirs, and an American food exporter’s nightmare rolls across the screen. A potato bug is shown munching on the deep green leaf of a potato plant--genetically engineered in the United States, the narrator says, to produce a toxin that kills Colorado potato bug larvae. The bug falls off the leaf, flailing its legs in the air in what looks like insect agony.

“They say this is safe, but I don’t want to eat it. Do you?” asked the filmmaker, Junichi Kowaka, in an interview.

Surveys show that most Japanese do not. In this land where food is considered most delicious when eaten raw or as close to its natural state as possible, genetically manipulated food is seen as synthetic, unwholesome and definitely unappetizing.

To blunt a nascent consumer rebellion, the Japanese government has proposed labeling bioengineered food to give consumers the freedom to reject it. That in turn has alarmed the United States, which fears that the move could threaten its $11-billion annual sales--including about $1.3 billion from California--to Japan, the No. 1 market for U.S. agricultural exports.

Japan is not the only nation gagging at the idea of genetically altered fare. A truly global food fight is underway. The outcome of the regulatory, marketing and public perception battle that has been joined in Japan could have far-reaching effects on what U.S. farmers plant next year, on the skyrocketing U.S.-Japan trade imbalance and on the struggle between biofood promoters and foes for the hearts and palates of consumers around the world.

At issue in the emotional political debate that has erupted worldwide is how much to regulate and whether and how to label genetically modified organisms, known in biospeak as GMOs. These organisms are created when new genes--sometimes from another species--are introduced into a plant or animal to produce “desirable” traits, such as resistance to cold, pests, disease, spoilage or even a particular brand of herbicide.

While U.S. farmers are quickly increasing the acreage planted with GMO seeds--to 40% or more of some crops--there is growing opposition in Europe, Japan and in some Third World countries on environmental, health, philosophical or religious grounds. The European Union has slapped restrictions on genetically modified plants and passed a law requiring GMO foods to be labeled.

Well-organized environmental groups are crusading against what they have branded “Frankenstein food,” fanning doubts about the products from Iceland to New Zealand. Anti-GMO protests have been staged in the Philippines, India and Hungary, according to activists, who are flooding the Internet with virulent attacks on biofoods. In London, where foes dumped bags of bioengineered soybeans onto Downing Street in protest last month, a poll by the Independent newspaper found that 68% of Britons were “worried” about eating GMO food. Only 27% said they were happy to eat it.

Not all countries are hostile to foods altered by gene-splicing: GMO seeds reportedly have received a warm welcome in Russia, China and Argentina. And plenty of consumers have nothing against GMO foods so long as they know what is on the menu. A 1994 poll in Australia, for example, found that 61% were happy to try GMO foods, but 89% wanted them labeled. Australia and New Zealand are now trying to set up a common labeling system. New Zealand Prime Minister Jenny Shipley said earlier this month that consumers have a right to know whether their food contains GMOs.

Nevertheless, a heated battle broke out last month at a U.N.-sponsored conference in Cartagena, Colombia, where delegates from more than 130 countries failed to agree on an international treaty to govern biosafety and trade in GMOs.

The U.S. government warned that the restrictions being debated in Cartagena would paralyze international trade. According to media reports and conference participants, the United States and five other agricultural exporters that opposed labeling GMOs were bitterly accused by the other nations of torpedoing a global environmental pact to safeguard the interests of their farmers and biotech firms.

The debate is by no means limited to food. Genetically modified material is being used in a wide range of products, from textiles to pharmaceuticals.

Food Draws the Most Emotional Response

Yet it is food that seems to generate the most emotional response.

Consumer advocates say that people must have the right to know--and thus reject--food that has been subjected to genetic “tampering.”

Biotech backers say that requiring such labels is tantamount to branding demonstrably safe food as inedible and would raise food prices for all consumers.

Proponents of bioengineering also say “genetically enhanced” species are essential to generate the crop yields needed to nourish the world’s exploding population and to reduce use of herbicides and pesticides. They say the foods have been exhaustively tested and demonstrated to be safe enough to pass muster with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as international regulators.

Foes assert that long-term studies on the effects of eating GMO foods have been inadequate. They question the environmental risks of developing pest-resistant or chemical-resistant crops, and they fear that bionic organisms could crowd out native species.

A subtext in many countries is suspicion of scientific “miracles,” new technologies and imperfect regulators, and the perception that the U.S. biotech industry has been heavy-handed in trying to shove new foods down frightened consumers’ throats, said Beth Burrows, president of the nonprofit Edmonds Institute in Edmonds, Wash., who attended the Cartagena conference.

Europeans have been sensitized to food-safety issues by the outbreak of “mad cow” disease. In Japan, the credibility of the Ministry of Health and Welfare was severely damaged by the 1996 revelation that its bureaucrats had knowingly allowed the sale of HIV-tainted blood products--a scandal that broke the same year that the ministry approved the first of 22 GMO crops for human consumption here.

Availability of GMO foods in Japan has not led to acceptance. More than 80% of those questioned in a 1997 government survey said they have “reservations” about such foods, and 92.5% favored mandatory labeling.

Unease is beginning to translate into action. The city of Fujisawa, near Tokyo, has banned all GMO foodstuffs from its school lunches. A tofu maker has begun advertising its product as “recombinant-DNA-soybean free.” And a number of powerful food-buying co-ops--which claim nearly 20 million members, or about 1 in every 6 Japanese--are trying to screen out or label GMO foods.

“It seems Americans only care about the quantity of their food, but Japanese are concerned about the quality,” filmmaker Kowaka said. “Nobody wants to eat this stuff.”

Kowaka is a food-safety activist with the Japan Descendants Fund, a nonprofit group that has succeeded in provoking widespread concern among Japanese consumers about chemical-emitting plastics in food packaging and the use of post-harvest chemicals on food. Last year, a number of ramen makers changed their packaging after Kowaka’s group reported that chemicals suspected of disrupting the human endocrine system leached from the plastic bowls when boiling water was poured over the dried noodles.

Kowaka’s current video, titled “The Dangers of Recombinant-DNA Food,” has sold about 1,000 copies at $130 each and is being shown at lectures and gatherings by consumer, environmental and religious groups, he said.

The Japanese government is countering anti-GMO groups like Kowaka’s with a campaign to convince a skeptical Japanese public that genetically altered foods are not only safe but desirable.

In fact, despite its draft proposal for a GMO labeling law, the Japanese government has been actively promoting biotechnology as a vital technology for the coming century and is investing billions to try to turn Japan into a world-class competitor. It is even attempting to genetically engineer strains of rice that will be tastier and hardier than conventional varieties.

The politics of genetically engineered food here have been complicated by the fact that all the GMO foods offered for sale so far have been imported. Japanese companies have not dared introduce gene-spliced foods of their own, and although farmers can legally plant GMO seeds, so far none has chosen to do so, said Kazuhiko Kawamura, who deals with the labeling issue at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

Foreign food producers complain that Japan’s powerful agricultural interests are trying to scare off consumers from GMO foods as part of a campaign to boost domestic agriculture.

“Over the last 30 years, there has been a concerted effort here in Japan to paint imported foods as being dangerous, as being less desirable,” said Dennis Kitch, Japan director of the U.S. Grains Council.

The effort has included everything from asserting to Japanese that their intestines are ill designed for digesting Western beef to convincing them that foreign produce is more chemical-laden than home-grown fare. Though false, U.S. officials and industry sources say, such claims have succeeded in instilling alimentary xenophobia.

Kowaka’s video is no exception. As the narrator warns that “we Japanese are being used as guinea pigs” for inadequately tested GMO foods, the camera shows unwitting children eating French fries--by suggestion, those made from genetically altered plants that kill potato bugs--at that archetypal American eatery, McDonald’s.

“They think all imported food is bad. That gets to be protectionist,” said a U.S. government official who argues that GMO labeling should not be used to reinforce unfounded consumer fears.

U.S. Wants Japan to Accept Standards

The United States has decided to require labels on genetically altered foods that are nutritionally different from traditional fare, that might contain allergens or that pose religious problems--such as a plant containing a pig gene--if and when any are introduced. Yet it doesn’t require labeling of foods whose chemistry is essentially unchanged, solely on the basis of genetic origin. GMO foes in the United States have filed suit in an attempt to reverse that decision, but meanwhile, the U.S. government is lobbying Japan to accept its standards.

“We’re asking them not to have a labeling requirement that stokes the fear that these foods are bad without any basis in fact,” said a U.S. official, adding that there is no evidence these foods are unsafe.

Kowaka insisted, however, that a potato with an inborn insecticide is no ordinary spud, and should bear a warning label if it cannot be banned altogether.

The Japanese committee studying labeling for the Agriculture Ministry has not yet ruled on the issue or decided what any label would say. The influential American Chamber of Commerce in Japan warns that GMO labeling “will create new nontariff trade barriers to imports.” And while U.S. officials are trying to keep their criticisms scientific and low-key, they also have hinted to Japan that they may protest any mandatory labeling requirement to the World Trade Organization--as they have done over the European Union law.

Japanese consumer advocates are outraged by the American stance.

Setsuko Yasuda, who runs the “No! GMO” campaign for the Consumers Union of Japan, said Americans should not meddle with Japan’s right to regulate food safety and quality.

If Americans truly believe in free trade and consumer choice, she said, they should label GMO food for what it is and let international customers make up their own minds.

“But to try to hide information [about product origin] and force-feed people what they don’t want to eat . . . is wrong,” Yasuda said. “It is American arrogance, and it will provoke anti-American sentiment here. You will lose hearts around the world.”

For Japan and the United States, the stakes in the GMO battle are high. Japan absorbs nearly 20% of all U.S. food exports. With the American farm economy ravaged by the Asian economic crisis, the affluent Japanese market is one that farmers and food processors can ill afford to lose, grain lobbyist Kitch said. Japan’s decision on labeling will be vital, and not just because of the size of its market; Tokyo’s decisions tend to influence regulators in other Asian capitals.

For Japanese, who must import more than half of the calories they consume each day, the increasing prevalence of GMOs in their food supply reinforces a feeling of food vulnerability.

For example, 97% of Japan’s soybeans are imported, mostly from the United States, and are turned into tofu, fermented miso, natto and other staples of the Japanese diet. However, 28% of last year’s U.S. soybean crop came from GMO seeds, according to the American Soybean Assn. That percentage could double when farmers plant this spring’s crop.

“We will have to find non-GMO sources,” Yasuda said, adding that if American farmers want Japan’s business, they will have to segregate crops.

Trouble is, U.S. farmers often plant GMO and traditional crops in the same field, use the same machinery to harvest and transport them, and pour their grains into container ships that bring a river of food across the Pacific to Japan.

However, DNA testing is so sensitive that it can detect one GMO part per trillion, Kitch said. That means a few stray kernels of GMO corn could “contaminate” bushels. To certify a product GMO-free would require costly testing and segregation at every stage in the processing and distribution chain, he said.

These obstacles have so far prevented Europe from fully implementing its labeling law, industry sources said.

As GMO crops or livestock come to dominate the U.S. market, genetically pristine products will become scarcer and more costly.

No one knows how much more expensive--though some estimate a “GMO-free” label could add 30% or more to the price, and wonder whether Japanese consumers will be willing to pay it.

Japan’s draft proposal on labeling does not specify how pure a non-GMO product would have to be. But without a threshold standard, a can of California tomato paste containing a smidgen of cornstarch that might have been made partly from GMO corn could wind up with a warning label--even if the tomatoes are all natural, Kitch said.

Consumer advocate Yasuda and her allies say that imperfect labeling is better than none. And the fewer the “food miles” from farm to dinner table the better, they argue, even if home-grown fare is more costly.

“Now, with globalization, we don’t know where our food comes from, how it is produced, and what kind of contaminants it might contain,” Yasuda said.

“Does free trade automatically mean that the cheapest food is the best food? We don’t think so.”