‘Italian’ purees likely to contain Chinese forced-labour tomatoes

[Pelican Press 0]

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‘Italian’ purees likely to contain ******** forced-labour tomatoes

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“Italian” tomato purees sold by several *** supermarkets appear to contain tomatoes grown and picked in China using forced labour, the BBC has found.

Some have “Italian” in their name such as Tesco’s “Italian Tomato Purée”. Others have “Italian” in their description, such as Asda’s double concentrate which says it contains “Puréed Italian grown tomatoes” – and Waitrose’s “Essential Tomato Purée”, describing itself as “Italian tomato puree”.

A total of 17 products, most of them own-brands sold in *** and ******* retailers, are likely to contain ******** tomatoes – testing commissioned by the BBC World Service shows.

Most ******** tomatoes come from Xinjiang province, where their production is linked to forced labour by Uyghur and other largely ******* minorities. The UN accuses the ******** state – which views these minorities as a security risk –

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. China denies it forces people to work in the tomato industry and says workers’ rights are protected by law. It says the UN report is based on “disinformation and *****”.

All the supermarkets whose products we tested dispute our findings.

Alamy

China grows most of its tomatoes in the province of Xinjiang

China grows about a third of the world’s tomatoes. The north-western province of Xinjiang has the perfect climate for growing the fruit.

It is also where China began a programme of mass detentions in 2017. Human rights groups allege more than a million Uyghurs have been detained in hundreds of facilities, which China has termed “re-education camps”.

The BBC has spoken to 14 people who say they endured or witnessed forced labour in Xinjiang’s tomato fields over the past 16 years. “[The prison authorities] told us the tomatoes would be exported overseas,” Ahmed (not his real name) said, adding that if the workers did not meet the quotas – as much as 650kg a day – they would be shocked with electric prods.

Mamutjan, a Uyghur teacher who was imprisoned in 2015 for an irregularity in his travel documentation, says he was beaten for failing to meet the high tomato quotas expected of him.

“In a dark prison cell, there were chains hanging from the ceiling. They hung me up there and said ‘Why can’t you finish the job?’ They beat my buttocks really hard, hit me in the ribs. I still have marks.”

Mamutjan, who picked tomatoes in detention, says he was hung from the ceiling of his cell as punishment for not picking enough of the fruit

It is hard to verify these accounts, but they are consistent, and echo

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which reported ******** and forced labour in detention centres in Xinjiang.

By piecing together shipping data from around the world, the BBC discovered how most Xinjiang tomatoes are transported into Europe – by train through Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and into Georgia, from where they are shipped onwards to Italy.

One company name repeatedly appeared as a recipient in the data. This was Antonio Petti, part of a group of major tomato-processing firms in Italy. It received more than 36 million kg of tomato paste from the company Xinjiang Guannong and its subsidiaries between 2020 and 2023, the data showed.

The Petti group produces tomato goods under its own name, but also supplies others to supermarkets across Europe who sell them as their own branded products.

Our investigation tested 64 different tomato purees sold in the ***, Germany and the US – comparing them in a lab to samples from China and Italy. They included top Italian brands and supermarket own-brands, and many were produced by Petti.

We asked Source Certain, a world-renowned origin verification firm based in Australia, to investigate whether the origin claims on the purees’ labels were accurate. The company began by building what its CEO Cameron Scadding calls a “fingerprint” which is unique to a country of origin – analysing the trace elements which the tomatoes absorb from local water and rocks.

“The first objective for us was to establish what the underlying trace element profile would look like for China, and [what] a likely profile would look like for Italy. We found they were very distinct,” he said.

Source Certain then compared those country profiles with the 64 tomato purees we wanted to test – the majority of which claimed to contain Italian tomatoes or gave the impression they did – and a few which did not make any origin claim.

The lab results suggested many of these products did indeed contain Italian tomatoes – including all those sold in the US, top Italian brands including Mutti and Napolina, and some ******* and *** supermarket own-brands, including those sold by Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer.

But 17 appeared to contain ******** tomatoes, 10 of which are made by Petti – the Italian company we found listed repeatedly in international shipping records.

Of those 10 made by Petti, these were for ***** in *** supermarkets at the time of testing from April-August 2024:

These were for ***** in ******* supermarkets, during our testing *******:

In response, all the supermarkets said they took these allegations very seriously and have carried out internal investigations which found no evidence of ******** tomatoes. Many have also disputed the testing methodology used by our experts. Tesco suspended supply and Rewe immediately withdrew the products. Waitrose, Morrisons, Edeka and Rewe said they had run their own tests, and that the results contradicted ours and did not show the presence of ******** tomatoes in the products.

But one major retailer has admitted to using ******** tomatoes. Lidl told us they were in another version of its Baresa Tomatenmark – made by the Italian supplier Giaguaro – sold in Germany last year “for a short time” because of supply problems and that they are investigating this. Giaguaro said all its suppliers respected workers’ rights and it is currently not using ******** tomatoes in Lidl products. The BBC understands the tomatoes were supplied by the Xinjiang company Cofco Tunhe, which the US sanctioned in December last year for forced labour.

In 2021, one of the Petti group’s factories was raided by the Italian military police on suspicion of ****** – it was reported by the Italian press that ******** and other foreign tomatoes were passed off as Italian.

But a year after the raid, the case was settled out of court. Petti denied the allegations about ******** tomatoes and the issue was dropped.

As part of our investigation into Petti, a BBC undercover reporter posed as a businessman wanting to place a large order with the firm. Invited to tour a company factory in Tuscany by Pasquale Petti, the General Manager of Italian Food, part of the Petti group, our reporter asked him if Petti used ******** tomatoes.

“Yes… In Europe no-one wants ******** tomatoes. But if for you it’s OK, we will find a way to produce the best price possible, even using ******** tomatoes,” he said.

Petti sent us what it said was its last invoice from Xinjiang Guannong (l) dated October 2020, but our undercover reporter spotted a label on a barrel sent to Petti dated August 2023

The reporter’s undercover camera also captured a crucial detail – a dozen blue barrels of tomato paste lined up inside the factory. A label visible on one of them read: “Xinjiang Guannong Tomato Products Co Ltd, prod date 2023-08-20.”

In its response to our investigation, the Petti group told us it had not bought from Xinjiang Guannong since that company was sanctioned by the US for using forced labour in 2020, but did say that it had regularly purchased tomato paste from a ******** company called Bazhou Red Fruit.

This firm “did not engage in forced labour”, Petti told us. However our investigation has found that Bazhou Red Fruit shares a phone number with Xinjiang Guannong, and other evidence, including shipping data analysis, suggests that Bazhou is its shell company.

Petti added that: “In future we will not import tomato products from China and will enhance our monitoring of suppliers to ensure compliance with human and workers’ rights.”

While the

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to ban all Xinjiang exports, Europe and the *** take a softer approach, allowing companies simply to self-regulate to ensure forced labour is not used in supply chains.

This is now set to change in the EU,

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, says Chloe Cranston, from the NGO Anti-Slavery International. But she warns this will make it even more likely that the *** will become “a dumping ground” for forced labour products.

“The *** Modern Slavery Act, sadly, is utterly not fit for purpose,” she says.

A spokesperson for the *** Department for Business and Trade told us: “We are clear that no company in the *** should have forced labour in its supply chain… We keep our approach to how the *** can best tackle forced labour and environmental harms in supply chains under continual review and work internationally to enhance global labour standards.”

Dario Dongo, journalist and food lawyer, says the findings expose a wider problem – “the true cost of food”.

“So when we see [a] low price we have to question ourselves. What is behind that? What is the true cost of this product? Who is paying for that?”

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#Italian #purees #******** #forcedlabour #tomatoes

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