"‘Italian’ purees in UK supermarkets likely to contain Chinese forced-labour tomatoes" 1 December 2024

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

Most Chinese tomatoes come from the Xinjiang region, where their production is linked to forced labour by Uyghur and other largely Muslim minorities. 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...

By piecing together shipping data from around the world, with the non-profit organisation C4ADS, 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...

Our investigation tested 64 different tomato purees sold in the UK, 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...17 appeared to contain Chinese tomatoes, 10 of which are made by Petti...

In response, all the supermarkets said they took these allegations very seriously and have carried out internal investigations which found no evidence of Chinese tomatoes...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 Chinese tomatoes in the products...

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 Chinese 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 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 Chinese 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...