OSAKA -- Forty-two percent of some 14,000 municipally run elementary schools throughout Japan are boycotting products made by scandal-tainted Snow Brand Milk Products Co. and its group companies, according to the results of a poll released Sunday.
The survey, conducted by Kyodo News in Tokyo's 23 wards and 672 cities nationwide, showed that some 5,800 schools have excluded milk, cheese and other products made by the group from their lunch menus.
Close to half of the schools in that group said they have been avoiding Snow Brand since the food-poisoning scandal in 2000 caused by tainted Snow Brand milk. A further 1,420 schools made a similar decision after subsidiary Snow Brand Foods was found last month to have abused a state subsidy-backed, beef-buyback scheme implemented after Japan's first outbreak of mad cow disease in December.
Only 4,377 schools, or 31 percent of those polled, said they would continue to use Snow Brand products.
Snow Brand was trying to recover from the 2000 food-poisoning scandal, which sickened more than 14,000 people nationwide, when it was revealed that subsidiary Snow Brand Foods Co. deliberately mislabeled beef to get subsidies from a state-sponsored buyback program set up for the mad cow disease crisis.
All city-run elementary schools polled in Okinawa Prefecture, where Snow Brand Foods allegedly distributed Australian beef mislabeled as domestic beef, said they have been boycotting the products.
"(The group) needs to face social punishment," a school official in Okinawa Prefecture said.
Even in Hokkaido, where the Snow Brand group originated, 317 schools are boycotting Snow Brand products. "We cannot tolerate these actions, morally or socially," an education board member in Hokkaido said.
Snow Brand has been seriously damaged by the scandals and has announced plans to pursue tieups with third parties to survive.