Ministry files against Snow Brand Food

TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- Japan's agriculture ministry said it has filed a criminal complaint against a Snow Brand Food Co manager implicated in the scandal over false labelling of its beef products.

Snow Brand Food, Japan's sixth-largest meat packer, admitted last week to falsely labelling 13.8 tons of Australian beef as domestic meat, in an attempt to get government money.

On Tuesday, the company admitted it had also mislabelled about 16 tons of other beef.

Agriculture Minister Tsutomu Takebe said Friday the complaint was filed with police in the western Japan province of Hyogo.

The fraud charge is against Tetsuaki Sugawara, head of the company's Kansai Meat Center in Itami city, according to Kyodo news agency.

Snow Brand Food, which said earlier this week it would stop producing and packaging some meat products, sought to take advantage of a government buy-back scheme.

The scheme was introduced after beef consumption fell following the outbreak of mad cow disease in Japan last September.

Parent's profit in doubt


Snow Brand Food Co president Shozo Yoshida resigned Tuesday to take responsibility for the labelling scandal

The ministry's announcement that a fraud charge was being filed came after Snow Brand Food's parent, Snow Brand Milk Products, said it would likely drop its goal of being in the black in the business year starting April.

"It may be difficult to hit profitability in the next business year," a Snow Brand Milk spokesman said, according to Reuters news agency.

Snow Brand Milk owns 65 percent of the meat-packing unit.

Snow Brand Food apologised for the scandal and its president, Shozo Yoshida, resigned on Tuesday to take responsibility for the scandal.

"We would like to deeply apologise for damaging trust in food administration and inviting the mistrust of consumers," the company said in a statement.

It added that it had received an order from the agriculture ministry to tighten its procedures, especially in connection with labelling.

Stock sliding

The company's stock has been falling steadily. It closed Friday at 43 yen, down 5 yen or 10.4 percent. That compares with a two percent slide by the benchmark Nikkei average.

The company said last week that employees had put 13.8 tonnes of Australian beef into boxes marked for Japanese beef last October, as part of a 280-tonne sale to a government-subsidised industry group.

Japanese consumers have been turning to foreign beef since the discovery of mad cow disease last year.

The Japan Meat Processors Association bought the beef as part of a government effort to counter a slowdown in sales of domestic beef and remove uninspected beef from the market.

Snow Brand Milk was involved in a food poisoning scandal in June 2000 that left more than 10,000 people ill.