抄録
Genetically modified (GM) crops have been developed and their industrial use has been increasing worldwide. In many countries, however, the use of GM crops is controversial among general consumers. Thus, to provide consumers with accurate information about food ingredients and to expand consumers' choices, many countries, including Japan, have introduced legislation requiring labels to be applied to agricultural products that contain approved GM crops at more than a specified threshold level. That threshold has been set at 5% since the beginning of the GM food labeling system in Japan.
To support the GM food labeling system, many detection methods for approved GM events have been developed, validated and adopted as official detection methods since the enactment of GM food labeling system. The official detection methods have been updated from time to time, in accordance with the emergence of newly developed GM crops. Especially for maize, to deal with the increasing number of stacked seeds, several revisions of quantitative detection methods were adopted.
In this article, the outline of GM food labeling system in Japan is described. Since the number of GM maize products is quite large and the detection scheme for maize is a little complicated, the current official detection methods for maize is explained.
