Police have raided offices of Nippon Meat Packers subsidiary Nippon Food as part of their investigation into fraud charges concerning a beef mislabelling scandal.


Nippon Food’s sales offices in Tokushima and Ehime, its branches in Osaka and Okayama, and the residences of three former regional sales chiefs were all subject to the police raid.


Shunji Tanaka of the Himeji office, Yoshinobu Igaue of the Ehime office and Seiji Morii of the Tokushima office are suspected of receiving ¥10.1m (US$82,494) for 14.4 tons of beef under the government’s beef buy back scheme following a BSE outbreak. The 14.4 tons of beef is suspected to have contained 4.3 tons of imported beef disguised as domestic beef in order to gain subsidies. All three deny any involvement by themselves or by Nippon Food in the scandal.