A district court on Thursday convicted two managers of the Kawai meat-processing company in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture, of falsely labeling mixed Japanese and U.S. beef as only Japanese beef.
Yoshiko Kawai, 58, senior managing director, received a suspended 18-month term, while Masataka Utsumi, 39, a former administration manager, received a suspended one-year term.
The Takamatsu District Court also fined the company 3 million yen, in line with prosecutors' demands.
According to the court, between January and August 2001, the company falsely labeled 29,376 boxes of frozen packaged beef as Japanese meat, even though it had been mixed with packages of U.S. beef. Each box contained several U.S. beef packages, and the company used about 250,000 of the packages in total, the court said.