Shozo Yoshida, president of major Japanese meat packer Snow Brand Food Co, is expected to announce today [Tuesday] that he will step down over the company’s broadening deception scandal.
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His resignation will be announced at a press conference, according to NHK, Japan’s partly government-run television network.
Snow Brand found itself immersed in scandal last week after allegedly repackaging Australian beef as domestic-produced in a bid to take advantage of a government scheme to buy up and incinerate Japanese beef possibly tainted with BSE.
On Monday, the scandal deepened as the company also admitted to labelling beef from Hokkaido, northern Japan, where the country’s second case of mad cow disease was confirmed, as coming from Kumamoto in the south.
The agriculture minister revealed on Friday that the government is preparing to take legal action against Snow Brand, and meanwhile many supermarkets have responded to the news by removing Snow Brand products from their shelves.
