KANAGAWA (TR) – The 63-year-old former president of a company based in Sagamihara City and others have been accused of falsely labeling foreign pork and chicken for school lunches and distribution to businesses as “domestic.”
The former president of Sagamihara City food processing company Kotobuki Foods, Toshihiro Kajima, and five others have been arrested on suspicion of violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, reports the Asahi Shimbun (Nov. 13).
From September to October last year, Kajima and others are suspected of delivering foreign pork and chicken to school lunch centers and other businesses in Sagamihara City, falsely labeling them as “domestic.”
When questioned, Kajima admitted to the charges. “I’ve been doing this for more than 10 years,” he said. He added, “I didn’t want to be eliminated from bidding because domestic products were expensive. I did it for the company’s survival by making profits.”
Between September and October of last year, the company delivered a total of approximately 1,770 kilograms of pork and chicken meat, including foreign products, to 13 school lunch centers in Sagamihara, Kawasaki and Atsugi prefectures cities in Kanagawa and six cities in Tokyo (including Tama, Inagi and Fuchu).
Between May and October of last year, the company pretended products came from Japan by displaying the phrase “from the Kanto region” on certificates of origin and labels of delivered products.
Kotobuki Foods, which is currently undergoing bankruptcy proceedings, used meat from Thailand, Canada, Spain, Mexico and other countries to carry out the ruse.
In October of last year, the falsification was discovered during an unannounced inspection by the Kawasaki City Board of Education. The following month, prefectural police raided the company and its processing plant.
