Fujiya factory fudged on pudding expiries

The food scandal involving confectioner Fujiya Co. widened Friday after it was found that puddings made at its Osaka Prefecture plant didn't get expiry dates until they were packaged over 300 km away in Saitama Prefecture, sources said.

Shipping food products devoid of expiry dates is probably a violation of the Food Sanitation Law, the Osaka and Saitama prefectural governments believe.

Osaka has since told Fujiya to stamp the puddings with expiry dates before shipping them to Saitama, the sources said.

According to the prefectures, the plant in the Osaka city of Izumisano shipped blank puddings and packaging material to the Saitama plant, which "completed" the products and stamped them with expiry dates before distribution.

The puddings, despite being made in batches and on separate days, all got the same date, the sources said. This was done to appease retailers, one worker was quoted as saying.

"We received complaints from retailers that it was problematic for them that products arriving on the same day had different expiry dates. So we marked all our products with the same expiry date to match the expiry date of the products we made earlier," a Saitama plant employee reportedly told prefectural investigators.

The food scandal has triggered a wave of local and state inspections at the tainted confectioner's factories.

On Tuesday, the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry interviewed Fujiya officials about reports it extended the expiration dates for cream puffs and puddings against in-house guidelines.

"From the beginning, expiry dates are set shorter than the period when consumers can eat the products safely. I assume plant employees made their own decision that there will be no problem even if the dates are extended by one day," a Fujiya official was quoted as telling the ministry.

On Thursday, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government summoned Fujiya Managing Director Koichi Miura to explain the use of expired ingredients in unbaked cake products.

Miura apologized and said he heard the handling of the ingredients was left to the decisions of the manufacturing plant employees, and that he expected to get reports from the plant Friday.

On Friday, Shizuoka Prefecture inspected a Fujiya plant in Fujisusono where a bug was found in a candy box in 2005.

The well-known confectioner has suspended operations at its five cake factories and halted cake sales at retail outlets nationwide, including 707 franchisees, since Jan. 11.

Its candy and cookie operations chalked up sales of 41.9 billion yen in the business year to last March.