Misinformation about school lunches has sparked a storm in Kitakyushu City in Fukuoka Prefecture. There, false claims of Muslim-friendly meals triggered more than 1,000 complaints and disrupted city operations. The controversy stemmed from confusion over an allergy-friendly lunch served once in 2023 and a petition later scrapped in 2025.
While the city faced backlash, towns in Ibaraki Prefecture have moved in the opposite direction. There, schools have introduced halal school lunches, so Muslim students can eat alongside their classmates.
False claims spread on social media that Kitakyushu City had decided to serve Muslim-friendly school lunches. The city soon received a flood of protest calls and emails.
The number of complaints, including objections to the city’s international exchange policies, surpassed 1,000 and disrupted municipal operations. On the night of the 22nd, the city’s Board of Education posted a statement on its website, stressing that the claims were false.
The misinformation alleged that an Afghan Muslim woman petitioned the city to provide school lunches for her elementary school child that excluded pork and pork extract, which are religiously prohibited. It further claimed that the City Council’s Education and Culture Committee approved the petition and that “Muslim-friendly lunches” had already begun in Kitakyushu City.
In reality, the council received the woman’s petition in June 2023...
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