Genome editing is being applied in various fields of life sciences, such as medicine, agriculture, food and energy. Regarding the regulatory status of genome editing in Japan, policies are being issued by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and the Ministry of the Environment, and applications to the fields of agriculture and food are being widely considered. However, there has hardly been any explicit discussion on the differences between applications for plants and animals. We argue there are several points that should be taken into account. In this paper, we clarify the unique regulatory issues that separate genome edited animals from plants, in particular, safety assessment, consumer perception, and animal welfare.
