Japan's Agriculture Ministry on Friday began checking all frozen beef stored under a government buy-back programme for false labels, following revelations Snow Brand Food Co Ltd had improperly labelled its meat products, Reuters reports.
Japan's sixth-largest meat packer admitted in late January to labelling Australian beef as domestic to take advantage of the scheme, which is intended to help local industry struggling with an outbreak of mad cow disease.
The programme, which removed from the market beef produced before October 18 when a government screening system was set up, is also aimed at restoring public confidence in Japanese beef.
"We decided to expand our checks to all 22,306 lots of the stored beef at all 259 warehouses, from the previous plan for 397 lots at 39 warehouses," an official with the ministry's meat and egg division said.
The ministry will check that the 12,000 tonnes of beef has the correct grade, origin and processing date.
If there are no irregularities, the checks should be completed by the end of March, the official said.
The ministry said the stored beef would be incinerated later to keep it from reaching consumers.
Japan confirmed its first case of mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), last September. Since then two other dairy cows have tested positive.
As a result, consumers have shunned beef, particularly home-bred meat, ignoring government assurances it is safe. British scientists discovered BSE in 1986 and linked the disease a decade later to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), a fatal brain affliction in humans.
In Europe, vCJD has killed about 100 people.
There have been no reports of deaths or illness in Japan linked to mad cow disease.