Bamboo labeling scam nets arrests

SHIZUOKA (Kyodo) Two businessmen were arrested Thursday on suspicion of falsely labeling and selling Chinese-grown bamboo shoots as grown in Japan, police said.

The suspects were identified as Osamu Shirakawa, 55, president of Tokyo-based food product trader Tomei Fruits Co., and Yoshinori Sakiyama, 47, an employee of the company. They are suspected of violating the 1993 unfair competition prevention law.

Shirakawa and Sakiyama allegedly sold about 900 cans of Chinese-grown bamboo shoots from October through December in 2008 to a Shizuoka food-processing firm after falsely labeling them as produce from Fukuoka Prefecture, the police said.

The suspects first sold the canned shoots from China to another food processor in the prefecture who dumped them into separate unlabeled cans. They then bought them back and labeled them as grown in Fukuoka Prefecture and sold them to the Shizuoka firm, the police said.

The police raided Tomei Fruits' offices in August and questioned several people.

In June, the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry issued a business improvement order to Tomei Fruits.