Snow Brand officials go down

Five former officials at the now-defunct Japanese company Snow Brand Foods conspired to falsely label imported beef products as domestic beef and swindled an industry body out of millions of yen in a government buyback scheme, so the Kobe District Court announced on Friday as it sentenced the officials to prison.

A report in Kyodo news writes that the five had all pleaded guilty to defrauding 196 million yen from an industry body by falsely labelling imported beef as domestic beef to receive state subsidies under the buyback scheme - devised after mad cow disease hit Japan last year.

In handing down the ruling, Presiding Judge Akiyoshi Sasano said the five had conspired with two senior executives of the company, who are being tried separately from the five and have pleaded not guilty.

The five sentenced on Friday are Shigeru Hatakeyama, 56, head of the company's meat sales and procurement division, Masao Hirose, 55, chief of the firm's processed meat section, Shizuo Sugiyama, 51, a section chief in Hatakeyama's division, Tetsuaki Sugawara, 48, head of the company's Kansai Meat Center in Itami, Hyogo Prefecture, and Yusuke Tasaki, 56, who headed the company's Kanto Meat Center in Kasukabe, Saitama Prefecture.

The court also added that there has long been a practice in the meat industry to falsify information about products, such as the production area.

The buy-back scheme was designed to purchase domestic beef from distributors hit by slumping sales as consumers rejected beef. According to the Kyodo report the industry body, the Japan Ham & Sausage Processors Cooperative Association, had purchased some 280 tons of beef from Snow Brand Foods, including 30 tons falsely labelled as domestic beef.

The Tokyo-based company, a subsidiary of Snow Brand Milk Products Co., dissolved itself on 30 April.