Snow Brand's Unethical Practices at Japan

The first of the alleged unethical practices that came to light was food poisoning. On June 27, 2000 people from Osaka, Wakayama, Hyogo, Nara, Kyoto, Shiga, Okayama and Hiroshima prefectures in Western Japan, began to complain of illness after consuming Snow Brand's low fat milk. The victims suffered from diarrhea, stomach pain and vomiting and some of them needed to be hospitalized after consuming low fat milk produced on June 23, 2000 and June 24, 2000 at Snow Brand's factory in the Miyakojima Ward in Osaka. Immediately after the incident, the Osaka Prefectural Board of Education instructed schools not to serve children milk that was produced in the Osaka factory...

In order to help the suffering beef industry, the government started a buyback program under which government subsidized industry groups bought beef from meat processing companies. The beef bought through the program was destroyed by the government to make sure that it was not resold. However, only beef from domestic cows slaughtered prior to October 18, 2001 qualified for the program as that was the date when testing of all beef for BSE began. On January 23, 2002, Yoichi Mizutani, the president of Nishinomiya Reizo a warehouse company contracted by Snow Brand Food, told Mainichi, a Japanese newspaper, that on the instructions of Snow Brand Food officials, in October 2001 it had repacked Australian beef into boxes labeled as domestic beef...