Eggs produced by Akita Foods Co. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
The farm ministry has disciplined six bureaucrats who were wined and dined by an egg industry official involved in a separate bribery scandal that has ensnared a former agriculture minister.
Masaaki Edamoto, the top career bureaucrat in the ministry, was among the six who received pay cuts or warnings.
On two separate occasions, the bureaucrats had dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Tokyo that cost more than 20,000 yen ($190) each. Yoshiki Akita, the former head of Akita Foods Co., an egg producer based in Hiroshima Prefecture, picked up the tabs each time.
Workers destroy fowl at a poultry farm in Saiki, Oita Prefecture, where a highly pathogenic avian flu strain was found. (Eiji Hori)
The farm ministry has issued a nationwide warning about a potentially unprecedented spread of avian flu, which has already led to the culling of a record number of chickens.
Ministry officials instructed all 47 prefectures to have poultry farms check on their animal hygiene measures and submit reports. All poultry farms are also being asked to thoroughly disinfect their animal quarters.
Most of the avian flu cases confirmed so far have occurred in western Japan. But the avian flu virus was found earlier in the feces of wild birds in Hokkaido, and experts said all prefectures are at risk of the disease.