Wholesaler nabbed for mislabeling

NAGOYA (Kyodo) Three executives of a farm products wholesaler were arrested Friday on suspicion of selling Chinese bamboo shoots as domestically grown, police said.

Yoshihito Mori, 52, president of the wholesaler based in Ichinomiya, Aichi Prefecture, and two others had allegedly been urging client canners since 2003 to fill the cans with bamboo shoots imported from China and to sell them as products from Kumamoto and Kagoshima prefectures, although they contained few domestic bamboo shoots, the police said.

The suspects attached photos of the canners' employees, who pretended to be producers of bamboo shoots, to the falsely labeled products to convince consumers of the product's domestic provenance, according to the investigation.