April 2, 2007

Japanese court issues fines over bird flu cover up

A north-eastern Japanese court fined a poultry company and two former executives JPY1.8 million for covering up an outbreak of bird flu, a news report said Friday (Mar 30).

The Mito District Court also sentenced both former IKN Egg Farms Chairman Taiyo Saito, 67, and former IKN executive Ikuo Eguchi to one year and two months in jail each for not reporting the H5N2 infection, which is not considered dangerous to humans, Kyodo News agency said. Both men's jail terms were suspended for three years, it added.

Police in Ibaraki prefecture--where Yokohama-based IKN operates several poultry farms--had arrested the two men last February on suspicion of having submitted false samples during bird flu inspections the local government conducted in August 2005.

Those inspections came three months into a year-long bird flu outbreak in Ibaraki that saw prefectural authorities ultimately destroy about 5.7 million birds by last June in the effort to contain the disease.

Ibaraki is about 80 kilometres northeast of Tokyo.

Presiding Judge Masahito Hayashi's decision Friday found IKN and the two men guilty of violating a law for preventing the spread of infectious diseases among domesticated animals, Kyodo said.

IKN was fined JPY1.3 million in Friday's decision, while Saito and Eguchi were handed fines of JPY300,000 and JPY200,000, respectively, Kyodo said.