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“Italian” tomato purees sold by several British supermarkets appear to contain tomatoes grown and picked in China using forced labor, the BBC has discovered.
Some have “Italian” in their name, like Tesco’s “Italian tomato puree”. Others have “Italian” in their description, like Asda's Double Concentrate which says it contains “Italian-grown tomato puree” – and Waitrose's “Essential Tomato Puree”, describing itself as a “puree of Italian tomatoes.”
A total of 17 products, mostly own brands sold at UK and German retailers, are likely to contain Chinese tomatoes, according to tests commissioned by BBC World Service broadcasts.
Most Chinese tomatoes come from Xinjiang province, where their production is linked to the forced labor of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities. The UN accuses the Chinese state – which considers these minorities a security risk – of torture and abuse. China denies forcing people to work in the tomato industry and says workers' rights are protected by law. He says the UN report is based on “disinformation and lies”.
All the supermarkets whose products we tested dispute our conclusions.
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China grows most of its tomatoes in Xinjiang province
China produces around a third of the world's tomatoes. The northwest province of Xinjiang has the ideal climate for growing these fruits.
It's also where China launched a program of mass detentions in 2017. Human rights groups say more than a million Uighurs have been detained in hundreds of facilities, which China has called “re-education camps”.
The BBC spoke to 14 people who said they had suffered or witnessed forced labor in Xinjiang's tomato fields over the past 16 years. “(Prison authorities) told us the tomatoes would be exported abroad,” said Ahmed (pseudonym), adding that if workers did not meet quotas – up to 650 kg per day – they would be electrocuted with electric prods. .
Mamutjan, a Uyghur teacher imprisoned in 2015 for an irregularity in his travel documents, says he was beaten for failing to meet the high tomato quotas expected of him.
“In a dark prison cell, chains hung from the ceiling. They hung me there and said, “Why can't you finish the job?” » They hit me very hard on the buttocks, in the ribs. I still have marks.
Mamutjan, who picked tomatoes in detention, says he was hanged from the ceiling of his cell as punishment for not picking enough fruit.
These accounts are difficult to verify, but they are consistent and echo evidence in a 2022 U.N. report documenting torture and forced labor in Xinjiang detention centers.
By collating shipping data from around the world, the BBC discovered how most of Xinjiang's tomatoes are transported to Europe: by train via Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Georgia, from where they are then shipped to Italy.
The name of a company appeared several times as a recipient in the data. It was Antonio Petti, part of a group of large Italian tomato processing companies. It received more than 36 million kg of tomato paste from Xinjiang Guannong Company and its subsidiaries between 2020 and 2023, data showed.
The Petti Group produces tomato products under its own name, but also supplies others to supermarkets across Europe who sell them under their own brand.
Our investigation tested 64 different tomato purees sold in the UK, Germany and the US, comparing them in the laboratory to samples from China and Italy. They included major Italian brands and supermarket own brands, and many were produced by Petti.
We asked Source Certain, a world-renowned origin verification company based in Australia, to verify whether the origin claims on puree labels were accurate. The company began by creating what CEO Cameron Scadding calls a “fingerprint” unique to a country of origin: by analyzing the trace minerals that 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 that they were very distinct,” he said.
Source Certain then compared these country profiles with the 64 tomato purees we wanted to test – the majority of which claimed to contain plum tomatoes or gave the impression that they did – and a few which made no mention of origin.
The lab's results suggest that many of these products did indeed contain Italian tomatoes – including all those sold in the United States, major Italian brands including Mutti and Napolina, and some German and British supermarket own brands, including those sold by Sainsbury's and Marks & Spencer.
But 17 appeared to contain Chinese tomatoes, 10 of which are made by Petti — the Italian company we found listed repeatedly in international shipping records.
Of these 10 products made by Petti, they were on sale in UK supermarkets at the time of testing from April to August 2024:
These were on sale in German supermarkets during our testing period:
In response, all supermarkets said they took the allegations very seriously and had carried out internal investigations which found no trace of Chinese tomatoes. Many have also taken issue with the testing methodology used by our experts. Tesco suspended supplies and Rewe immediately withdrew the products. Waitrose, Morrisons, Edeka and Rewe said they had carried out their own tests and the results contradicted ours and did not show Chinese tomatoes in the products.
But one major retailer admitted to using Chinese tomatoes. Lidl told us that another version of its Baresa Tomatenmark – made by Italian supplier Giaguaro – was sold in Germany last year “for a short period” due to supply problems and that it was investigating this. subject. Giaguaro said all of its suppliers respected workers' rights and that it currently did not use Chinese tomatoes in Lidl products. The BBC understands the tomatoes were supplied by Xinjiang-based company Cofco Tunhe, which the US sanctioned in December last year for forced labor.
In 2021, Italian military police raided one of the Petti Group's factories on suspicion of fraud. The Italian press reported that Chinese and foreign tomatoes had been presented as Italian.
But a year after the raid, the matter was settled out of court. Petti denied the allegations regarding Chinese tomatoes and the case was dropped.
As part of our investigation into Petti, an undercover BBC journalist posed as a businessman wanting to place a large order with the company. Invited to visit a company factory in Tuscany by Pasquale Petti, general manager of Italian Food, part of the Petti group, our reporter asked him if Petti used Chinese tomatoes.
“Yes… In Europe, no one wants Chinese tomatoes. But if you agree, we will find a way to produce the best possible price, even using Chinese tomatoes,” he said.
Petti sent us what he says is his latest invoice from Xinjiang Guannong (left) dated October 2020, but our undercover reporter spotted a label on a barrel sent to Petti dated August 2023.
The reporter's hidden 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, production date 2023-08-20.”
In its response to our investigation, the Petti group told us that it had not purchased Guannong from Xinjiang since the company was sanctioned by the United States for using forced labor in 2020, but clarified that he regularly purchased tomato paste from a Chinese company called Bazhou. Red fruits.
This company “did not practice forced labor,” Petti told us. However, our investigation found that Bazhou Red Fruit shares a phone number with Xinjiang Guannong, and other evidence, including analysis of shipping data, suggests that Bazhou is its front company.
Petti added: “In the future, we will no longer import tomato products from China and will strengthen our monitoring of suppliers to ensure respect for human and worker rights. »
While the United States has introduced strict legislation banning all exports from Xinjiang, Europe and the United Kingdom are taking a softer approach, allowing companies to simply self-regulate to ensure forced labor is not used in supply chains.
This is now about to change within the EU, which has committed to adopting stricter laws, says Chloe Cranston of the NGO Anti-Slavery International. But she warns it will make it even more likely that the UK will become “a dumping ground” for the products of forced labour.
“Unfortunately, the UK’s modern slavery law is completely not fit for purpose,” she said.
A spokesperson for the UK Department of Trade and Business told us: “We are clear that no business in the UK should have forced labor in its supply chain… We maintain our approach on how the UK can best tackle forced labor and environmental damage in procurement. channels are continually reviewed and work internationally to improve global labor standards.
Dario Dongo, a food journalist and lawyer, says the findings reveal a larger problem: “the true cost of food.”
“So when you see (a) low price, you have to question yourself. What's behind that? What is the true cost of this product? Who pays for this? »
