One of the Nikkei editorials today is about the latest food processing scandal: fraudulent labels on meat. Helpful background can be gleaned from the Asahi English edition:

Meat Hope Co. routinely committed 13 types of misconduct over 24 years, including mislabeling its products, falsifying use-by dates and mixing intestines into ground meat, the farm ministry said.

The scandal-ridden meat processor based in Tomakomai, Hokkaido, dismissed all of its employees Tuesday in a sign that the company will soon fold. Meat Hope's production line was halted last Wednesday, when the company admitted to mixing pork into "100-percent" beef products over seven to eight years.

But the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries found during an on-site inspection that Meat Hope's misconduct was much more extensive and went further back.

The ministry determined that Meat Hope's wrongdoings had been willfully conducted on a systematic basis on the orders of President Minoru Tanaka and other executives.

...

Falsifying use-by dates was another common tactic, according to the ministry.

On a day-to-day basis, the company falsified the use-by date for products by moving forward their processing date by one day.

The use-by date shenanigans are a big, big deal in Japan, where many favored dishes use half-raw meat. What the Nikkei understandably wants to know is...

Why was this misconduct not detected earlier? In February of last year, information that would have [constituted] a charge of misconduct was said to have been gathered, but cooperative action was not taken by agriculture ministry officials and the Hokkaido prefectural government. Without a rapid response, measures to protect (internal) whistleblowers cannot be instituted in order to aid in stopping legal infractions.

At least one other food processor that was a client of Meat Hope's has been implicated in the manipulation of sell-by dates, too.　　Somewhat more comically for those of us who grew up with frugal meatloaf-making mothers, Meat Hope is also alleged to have stretched its ground beef by adding bread.

Like crossword puzzle writers, the Japanese love their eels. They are, I believe, easy to breed, and Japan came to import a lot of them from the PRC. Of course, the product scandals of the last year have lowered the value of imports from China; the latest food labeling scandal involves trying to pass them off as more prestigious domestic products:

The fisheries ministry Wednesday issued business improvement orders to two companies that mislabeled tons of eels imported from China and pretended they came from a Japanese region famed for its eel products.

Osaka-based trader Uohide and Kobe-based seafood wholesaler Shinko Gyorui Ltd. even used the name of a fictitious manufacturer under the scheme to win higher prices for domestic eels, especially those from Isshiki, Aichi Prefecture, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

According to the ministry's investigation, the two companies sold at least 390,000 eels, or 49 tons, imported from China as domestic products.

The ministry also suspended shipment of 540 tons of mislabeled eels stored at Uohide facilities and 207 tons at warehouses of Shinko Gyorui, a wholly owned subsidiary of seafood industry leader Maruha Nichiro Holdings Inc.

"A case of food mislabeling, which even uses a dummy company to sell products, is unprecedented and should be viewed as extremely malicious," a ministry official said.

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The average market price for a kilogram of imported kabayaki eels, or about eight eels, is between 1,800 and 1,900 yen ($17 and $18). Domestic products sell for between 4,000 yen and 5,000 yen per kg.

Setting up a shell company to disguise mislabeling may be unprecedented in Japan, but the maliciousness isn't; see the linked post below.