Fujiya’s Osaka Plant Didn’t Mark Expiry Dates on Puddings: Sources
By Kyodo News International, Tokyo
Jan. 19–TOKYO — Fujiya Co. did not put expiry dates on pudding products when they were manufactured at an Osaka Prefecture plant and stamped the dates later at a Saitama Prefecture plant where they are packaged, sources familiar with the matter said Thursday.
The Osaka and Saitama prefectural governments believe Fujiya may have violated the food sanitation law by shipping food products without marking them first with an expiry date.
The Osaka prefectural government has since instructed Fujiya to mark the puddings with expiry dates before they are shipped to Saitama, the sources said.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries interviewed Fujiya officials Tuesday over its reported extension of expiry dates for cream puffs and puddings beyond its in-house guidelines.
A Fujiya official told the ministry, “From the beginning, expiry dates are set shorter than the period when consumers can eat the products safely. I assume plant employees made their own decision that there will be no problem even if the dates are extended by one,” according to the sources.
According to Saitama and Osaka prefectures, the plant in the Osaka city of Izumisano shipped out puddings and their packaging material bearing no expiry dates to the Saitama plant, where the products were “completed” through a packaging process and stamping of expiry dates.
Batches of puddings made on a different day in Osaka all bore the same expiry date when they were shipped out for distribution from the Saitama plant, the sources said.
“We received complaints from retailers that it was problematic for them that products arriving on the same day had different expiry dates. So we marked all products with the same expiry date to match the expiry date of the products made earlier,” a Saitama plant employee reportedly told prefectural investigators.
Also on Thursday, Osaka Prefecture announced the Izumisano plant shipped or received a total of 33,600 cream puffs in July 2005 and October 2006 whose expiry dates were marked one-day longer than the in-house standard.
The prefecture said the plant shipped 19,000 such cream puffs on July 11-12, 2005 to the Saitama plant, and received from there 14,600 such cream puffs on Oct. 22-24, 2006.
On Thursday, the Tokyo metropolitan government summoned Fujiya’s managing director, Koichi Miura, to ask about the recent scandal in which Fujiya was found to have used ingredients whose use-by date had expired in unbaked cake products.
Miura offered his apology, saying he heard that the ingredients were used based on a decision by manufacturing plant employees, and added that he is expected to receive reports from the plant Friday.
Meanwhile, Shizuoka Prefecture will inspect Friday a Fujiya plant in Fujisusono where a bug-containing candy box was found in 2005.
Since Jan. 11, Fujiya has suspended operations at the five cake factories and halted cake sales at its retail outlets nationwide, including 707 franchisees.
Fujiya’s candy and cookies operations chalked up sales of 41.9 billion yen in the business year to March 2006, accounting for half of its overall sales.
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