Yoshinori Okoso, chairman of Nippon Meat Packers Inc., is expected to resign as head of the Japan Ham & Sausage Processors Cooperative Association in the wake of a farm ministry request that the body take action over a beef-labeling scandal involving a Nippon Meat Packers subsidiary, industry sources said Thursday.

The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry was scheduled to summon Katsuo Ishihama, senior managing director of the association, to issue the request formally.

The mislabeling case involves some 1.3 tons of imported beef that the subsidiary in question, Nippon Food Inc., had passed off as domestic produce and sold to the association under a state-run beef buyback program.

The program was aimed at bailing out the domestic cattle industry, which was bludgeoned by September's outbreak of mad cow disease.

But the association canceled the sales contract on July 12 at the behest of Nippon Meat Packers, better known as Nippon Ham, despite being asked by the ministry not to do so, allowing Nippon Ham to incinerate the beef in question on July 19.

The farm ministry was expected to tell Ishihama that the association should take stiff action against officials who authorized the resale of the beef to Nippon Ham, the sources said.

The association will also be asked to improve its decision-making processes, whose shortcomings have been exposed by the beef-labeling fraud, the sources said.

But the ministry has concluded that the association was not aware of the mislabeling scam and was not pressured by Nippon Ham to support it.

The ministry has thus excluded association officials from its plans to prosecute those involved in the case.

Meanwhile, the ministry plans to set up a third-party committee to study how industry associations should operate, officials said.