• Introduction
• Why We Choose This Topic

• Challenges to Prejudice against GMO in Japan
• GMO in Japan
• Survey
• Approach to Solution
• Conclusion

• University Festival
• Poster Session
• Experiment
• Questionnaires

• Online Forum about Syn Bio Regulation

Human Practices

Introduction

In 1994, Calgene, an American company, invented and started to sell surprising item. It was a tomato that can be kept in good quality for a long time. In USA, major tomato production areas were Florida and California, but these areas were far away from big consuming areas. Because of this, all tomatoes shipped out unripe, and most of Americans were not able to get ripe tomatoes. New tomatoes invented by Calgene introduced the anti-sense genes. This suppressed the expression of a enzyme coding gene that is related to maturing tomatoes. These tomatoes stay fresh for long time, standing proof against long distance transport. If you know what I mean, this tomato is just what we call GM (Genetically Modified) food, and actually, this was the first GM food in the world.

GMOs are stronger against diseases, or has improved yields compared to its wild type. After this, GM foods started to be given some approval, especially in North America, while making discussions around world at an incredible speed. GM foods are expected as one of the solutions for food crisis in recent years. On the other hand, GM foods are greatly debated about their risks before birth of GM foods as items for sale.

And this year, we, HokkaidoU_Japan set this as main subject of our Human Practice project.

Why We Chose This Topic

We HokkaidoU_Japan set “Antimicrobial-peptides (AMPs)” as main theme of 2015 project, and all projects are considered to have the application to oral intake. That is, all projects of our team are related with GM foods, and that is why we chose GMOs as topic for our Human Practice.

Challenges to Prejudice against GMOs in Japan

GMOs in Japan

In Japan, our home country, some specific kinds of GM crops are allowed to go on sale by the government. In addition, food corporation needs to specify “This is GM Food” only if the foods meets two condition.

• A GMO is used as top three of builders’ weights.
• A GMO is accounting above 5% of total weight.

This means that Japanese consumers may be putting GMOs in their mouth without recognizing it.

The Unfair Recognition to GM Food in Japan

If you’ve learned biology, you must know that foods which we eat are digested by some kinds of enzymes step by step. Of course, DNA contained in our foods we eat is also digested, and they become too short to exert their function, for example, expressing proteins. From this fact, we can say that modified genes itself cannot affect us badly by eating.

Though there is still a possibility that the proteins expressed from modified genes become unknown antigen for human beings and affect badly, there has not been a report that says anyone got any illness or died from GMOs in the two decades after initiation of GMOs' production. Following this background, in North America and China, large amount of GM crops are produced and consumed every day. On the other hand, Japanese people still have intense aversion to GMOs and tend to reject it.

Problems

As above, Japanese consumers tend to avoid GMOs without any specific reason and evaluate them unfairly without considering the benefit of them. We thought that it is a very big program since GMOs could be a solution for upcoming food crisis expected sometimes in the future.

Survey

This year, our team conducted a survey to research the reorganization of GMOs among Japanese consumers. We took our survey in Sapporo, Hokkaido, around our university campus and Odori Park.

Actual questionnaires are shown on below as pdf file.

Questionnaires of GM Foods (English version)

Result

We got 108 answers.

Results are shown on below.

Ratios

Prospect

Do you know what GMO is?

In Japan, people not likely to think of "genetically modified organisms" or "genetically modified foods" when hearing the term “GMO”. It may be because “GMO” is the abbreviation of English words, and they are unfamiliar for us, Japanese. However even we ask about “Idenshi kumikae (gene recombination in Japanese)", nobody was able to explain it well.

How do you feel about GMOs?

Most people had negative impression to GMOs.

How do you feel about GM Foods?

Most people had negative impression to GM Foods.

Do you think that GM Foods are harmful to our health?

Most people did’t know about it, but some people answered that GMOs are harmful to our health. On the other hand, few people concluded that GMOs are not harmful.

Do you have difficulty accepting intake GM Foods?

About half the people answered that if it is not harmful to us or good for our health, but they said that they still will eat it.

Do you think that GMOs are necessary for us in the future?

Most people did’t know about it. Some people answered that GMOs are not necessary, but few people had an strong opinion that GMOs must be rejected.

Comments

• Age: 50`s / Sex: M

  I think that properly providing of information about GMOs are necessary.

• Age: 40`s / Sex: M

  I don’t want my children to eat GM Foods. And I’m concerned wonder if contaminations in environment by GMOs occur.

• Age: 20`s / Sex: F

  Frankly speaking, I don’t have enough knowledge about GM Foods.

• Age: 50`s / Sex: F

  I have a vague concern over GM Foods but GMOs are one of the solutions to food crisis in the future. So I want someone to tell us the safety of GM Foods clearly.

• Age: 30`s / Sex: M

  I think that GMOs still have so many uncertainties. However I don’t learn about GMOs by myself very much, I want to know the opinions of both good and bad aspects of GM Foods.

• Age: 50`s / Sex: F

  I have a bad impression to GM Foods because it’s artificial. And I’ll not select GM Foods because we can’t conclude that GM Foods are perfectly safe only by the fact that we have never heard any health damages.

  However because the bias by the lack of information is surely presented, I think that the opportunities for general people to learn about GM Foods are necessary and we must understand it.

• Age: 50`s / Sex: F

  Because the lack of the information about GMOs, it’s difficult for me to understand it.

• Age: 40`s / Sex: F

  I’m concerned the intake of GM Foods very much, because it’s not clear that how GMOs influence our health.

• Age: 40`s / Sex: F

  I don’t know it well, I heard that GMOs are referred to as carcinogens, so I’m careful not to buy GM Foods. In addition, I don’t know the reason why we produce GM Foods.

Problem Seen from the Result

We made sure that many people have negative impression of GMOs and GM Foods but they don’t have the evidence or knowledge of their negative impression of GMOs from the results of Q3, 4, 5, or 6. On the other hand, many people are likely to understand the importance of GMOs or GM technology.

That is, many people have negative impression of GMOs with not appropriate knowledge or information but vague bad images of GMOs. The yield of GMOs are now increasing and it is predicted that GM foods will play a key role in food problem in the future. So we, HokkaidoU team, regard this prejudice against GMOs in Japan as an important problem.

Approach to Solution

To approach to the problem that we listed above, we took 2 actions.

We explained what a GMO is and how it would act when it goes inside our body and gave out paper explaining it to people who kindly answered our survey.

We described the reason why GMOs are made or how GM Foods are distributed in this paper. And we also described that eaten GMOs are digested like normal foods and DNA included GMOs is also digested and lose their function as genes.

At the last of paper, we described that however GMOs still have many uncertainties and we can’t conclude that GMOs are perfectly safe, we want people to evaluate properly with the correct knowledge about GMOs and end this explanation with that.

Actual paper for explanation are shown on below as pdf file.

Paper for GMOs' explanation (Japanese version)

We posted a video explaining how GMOs are processed after it goes into our body on YouTube so that people all around the world can watch it.

You can also watch the video on below window.

Conclusion

In Japan, public opinions need to be changed in order to put GM foods on sale. This means that even if we went on with our project and succeeded to commercialize it, we could not sell it if public rejected it. By our approach, we hope that more people get correct knowledge on GM foods, and evaluate them using proper facts.

University Festival

To gain people’s appropriate understanding about GMOs, we should start from explanation of basic information, for example “What is Gene Recombination?”, “What is DNA” and so on.

Because we want people to feel familiar with Gene Recombination or DNA, we hold an educational workshop in Hokkaido University Festival that was held from June 11 to June 14, 2015. This workshop was our third year participating in University Festival. Because Hokkaido University Festival gets different visitors, we could explain the question described above to wide range of people through the poster session or experiment.

We also took the questionnaires and survey that how does the impression of people to Gene Recombination change between before participation in our workshop and after that.

Poster Session

We made posters on following topics.

• What is DNA
• How DNA is familiar to us
• What is synthetic biology
• What is iGEM, and what are our activities

Experiment

We conducted an experiment detecting a DNA extraction from banana. Our aim was to make participants feel more familiar to DNA.

Protocol

1. Crush one third of banana with spoon to break its cell wall.
2. Mix 30 mL of 10% saltine water and 2.5 mL of detergent. Saltine water takes away negative electric charge form nucleic acid, and detergent breaks cell membrane.
3. Pour 1 and 2 into a beaker through coffee filter to filtrate them.
4. After 5 minutes, pour 40 mL of 100% ethanol into the beaker slowly.
5. You’ll see some white lump, which is exactly the DNA!

Questionnaires

We took questionnaires to our participants, and we got 91 answers.

Results are shown on below.

Ratios

Impression on Gene Recombination

Comments

• Age: 30’s / Sex: F

  Score before workshop: 5
  Genetic modification depends on how to use.

  Score after workshop: 5
  Genetic modification is unexpectedly familiar.

• Age: 40’s / Sex: F

  Score before workshop: 2
  I think genetic modification affects our body and environment.

  Score after workshop: 7
  Because genetic modification contributes to food problem.

• Age: high school student / Sex: F

  Score before workshop: 3
  Because it changes inherit DNA.

  Score after workshop: 9
  Because genetic modification dosen't affect our health

• Age: junior high school student / Sex: F

  Score before workshop: 5
  I heard about it last year but I was poor at biology and could not be interested in genetic modification.

  Score after workshop: 10
  I felt DNA familiar through your explanation.

• Age: university student / Sex: M

  Score before workshop: 3
  Because I have a image that it was featured on TV program.

  Score after workshop: 6
  Because genetic modification has potential to be useful in the future.

• Age: university student / Sex: M

  Score before workshop: 5
  If it dosen't affect the free selection of people, it should be allowed.

  Score after workshop: 5
  Genetic modification is not ends but means, and it depends on users.

General Comments

• I knew the word DNA but could not explain it to my children. It was good opportunity that kind young men explained it to them. They knew details and were cool. (from parent of the respondent)
• I had a bad image for genetic modification because I had heard genetically modified foods affected our health. But, I knew it contributed to our society and came to have a good impression through your explanation.
• It was interesting because I could watch DNA from a familiar food, banana.
• I felt DNA familiar through the experiment. It was so fun because I could watch DNA from familiar foods,banana. Thank you.
• The experiments was so fun. Thank you.
• Your explanation was easy to understand.
• You should tell us more the advantage of genetic modification.

Online Forum about Syn Bio Regulation

In this year, we participated in the online forum held by Tec_Guadalajara in Mexico. This online forum was held for shaping policy for our discipline of biotechnology/synthetic biology. This online forum imitates the real discussion from parties and observers to the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD, part of United Nations).
Hokkaido University team had a meaningful opportunity to think of the regulation about treat of GMOs with like-minded people who are familiar with gene recombination technology by participation in this forum. So this collaboration is one of our action of Human Practice about GMOs.

For more information, please see Collaborations page.

Reference

1. 田部井豊, 日野 明寛, 矢木 修身 (2005). 新しい遺伝子組換え体(GMO)の安全評価システムガイドブック NTS

2. 藤岡 典夫, 立川 雅司 (2006). GMOグローバル化する生産とその規制 農山漁村文化協会

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