Sunchlorella

The views on genetically modified food vastly differ between European countries and Japan. European countries have stringent policies against these foods and Japan has been indifferent to this topic.  In Europe, all genetically modified food needs to be marked in order to distinguish it from foods that have not been altered. In Japan, the “GMO” marks are also affixed to the food; additionally the marks are included on restaurant menus. The “GMO” symbol confirms that the food was genetically modified.  Foods without the mark of “GMO” mean they are not genetically modified. European markets have little trading of GMO food products.

Japan requires the GMO mark on seven farm goods and in only thirty two processed foods. The seven farm foods consist of: soybeans, corn, coleseed, potatoes, cotton, sugar beets and alfalfa sprouts. Some of the thirty two processed foods include natto, bean curd, bean paste, toasted soybean flour, popcorn and etc... And except for these processed foods, we do not need to add marks on foods like soy sauce, soy bean oil, corn oil, cornflake, mashed potatoes, etc...

In Japan, we utilize two classification markings for food. One mark is the GMO. The other is “unclassified” which signifies not being certain if this is a GMO. If it is not a GMO then no marking is required.  There is confusion in this process. Take bean curd and corn oil for example. If the bean curd is genetically modified then it is mandatory that GMO is on the product label, if it is not a GMO then no marking needs to be affixed. However, corn oil does not need any markings whether the product is a GMO or not. Corn oil without the mark means they are either GMO or “unclassified food”. All major companies of food oil said that their oil products are all categorized as “unclassified products”. If consumers in Japan do not realize that there are only thirty two processed foods that use the GMO mark then they may be confused and think some foods without marks are not GMO. Food products with less than 5% of GMO are allowed to classify themselves as non- GMO.

 In fact, non-GMO soybeans imported from the US contain around 1% of genetically modified beans. In Europe they have the import regulations, which control the GMO rate to whole product amount under 0.9%. They now are trying to lower this rate to 0.3%.