Police quiz Snow Brand officials

JAPAN – Police arrested five former officials of the now defunct Snow Brand Food recently for allegedly mislabelling imported beef as domestic to win support payments from the Japanese government.

Police believe the five conspired to falsely label 30 tonnes of foreign beef as home-produced to exploit a government plan to help domestic producers cope with a BSE crisis by buying back meat.

Snow Brand Food, which was owned by troubled dairy Snow Brand Milk, admitted earlier this year to having swindled nearly 1.7 million euro from the government by defrauding the buyback scheme.

Meanwhile, Snow Brand will make nearly a quarter of its workforce redundant later this month, according to reports in Japan. Around 1,000 of the company’s 4,500 employees will be offered early retirement payments. Snow Brand Milk laid off 1,000 workers in the summer of 2001.