The government's efforts to protect the agriculture sector is affecting ailing Snow Brand Milk Products Co. and its plans to restructure.
An LDP lawmaker on Wednesday said the farm ministry has told Snow Brand that it does not want the nation's largest dairy to restructure by forming a capital alliance with a foreign company.
The lawmaker, who was not identified, quoted Kikuhito Sugata, director general of the Agriculture Production Bureau of the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry, as saying, "I doubt that a foreign company will understand . . . why and how Japan's dairy farming should be protected."