Scandal-ridden meat packer Snow Brand Food (SBF) was further buffeted this week by reports that it has also falsely labelled imported pork products as domestic meat.
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Sources close to the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry told the Daily Yomiuri that since last June the Kanto Meat Center in Kasukabe has been falsely labelling imported pork as domestic produce and pork produced in Aomori Prefecture as originating in the Kanagawa Prefecture.
The discovery was made during an investigation by Agricultural Ministry inspectors, following which the ministry stated that the practice violated the Japanese Agricultural Standards Law governing the labelling of perishables and revealed that it would investigate how the centre obtained the false meat labels.
Employees of the Center admitted disguising imported pork loin as domestic pork but insisted that the head of the centre was aware of the practice.
They also reportedly told investigators that they affixed false sell-by dates on older meat when it accumulated. “Because we shipped fresher beef first,” one employee explained to the police, “stocks of older beef got so large that we started selling it with false labels”.
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By GlobalDataThe Mainichi Shimbun daily newspaper reported that the mislabelling practice may have gone on for up to four years.
Meanwhile, SBF’s parent company Snow Brand Milk Products (SBMP) is mulling an alliance with three other domestic dairy companies. According to a Kyodo news agency report issued on Saturday, Japan’s largest dairy producer is considering an alliance with either the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations (Zenno), the National Federation of Dairy Cooperative Associations (Zenrakuren) or the Kyodo Milk Industry Co.
