The ‘Italian’ puree is likely to contain Chinese forced-labor tomatoes.

The BBC has found that “Italian” tomato puree sold by a number of UK supermarkets contains tomatoes grown and picked by forced labor in China.

Some have “Italian” in the name, such as Tesco’s “Italian Tomato Puree”. 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 Puree”, which calls itself “Italian Tomato Puree”. describes as

A total of 17 products, most of which are sold in UK and German retailers under their own brands, are believed to contain Chinese tomatoes – the BBC World Service shows.

Most Chinese tomatoes come from the Xinjiang region, where their production is tied to the forced labor of Uyghurs and other large Muslim minorities. The United Nations accused the Chinese state – which views these minorities as a security risk – of violence and abuse. 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 “misinformation and lies”.

All the supermarkets whose products we tested disagreed with our findings.

China grows about one-third of the world’s tomatoes. The northwest region of Xinjiang has the best climate for growing fruit.

This is where China began a program of mass detentions in 2017. Human rights groups allege that more than a million Uighurs are detained in hundreds of facilities, which China has described as “re-education camps”.

The BBC has spoken to 14 people who say they have endured or witnessed forced labor on Xinjiang’s tomato farms over the past 16 years. “[The prison authorities] We were told that the tomatoes would be exported abroad,” Ahmed (not his real name) said, adding that if the workers did not meet the quota – 650 kg per day – they would be shocked with electricity. .

Mammutjan, a Uyghur teacher who was imprisoned in 2015 for irregularities in his travel documents, says he was beaten for failing to meet a high quota of tomatoes.

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

These accounts are difficult to verify, but they are consistent and echo. Evidence in the United Nations 2022 report which reported torture and forced labor in Xinjiang detention centers.

By collating shipping data from around the world, the BBC discovered how most Xinjiang tomatoes are transported to Europe – by train to Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Georgia, from where they are sent to Italy.

One company’s name repeatedly appeared as a recipient in the data. It was Antonio Petti, part of a group of large Italian tomato processing firms. It procured more than 36 million kilograms of tomato paste from the company Xinjiang Guanong and its subsidiaries between 2020 and 2023.

Petty Group manufactures tomato products 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 UK, Germany and the US – comparing them in a lab with samples from China and Italy. These included top Italian brands and supermarket own brands, and many were produced by Patti.

We asked Source Certain, a world-renowned authentication firm based in Australia, to investigate whether the original claims on Puree’s labels were true. The company was launched by its CEO, Cameron Schedding, with what it calls a “fingerprint” that is unique to its country of origin – analyzing the trace elements that tomatoes absorb from local water and rocks.

“The first goal for us was to establish what a baseline trace element profile would look like for China, and [what] A possible profile would look like Italy. We found that they are very distinct,” he said.

Source Certain then compared these country profiles to 64 tomato purees we wanted to test—the majority of which claimed to contain Italian tomatoes or gave the impression that they did—and some that did not. The original claim was not made.

Laboratory results suggested that many of these products did indeed contain Italian tomatoes – including the top Italian brands sold in the US, including Mutti and Napolina, and some German and UK supermarket own brands, including Sainsbury’s. and sold by Marks & Spencer.

But 17 contained Chinese tomatoes, 10 of which are made by Patti – the Italian company we found repeatedly listed in international shipping records.

Of the 10 made by Patty’s, these were on sale in UK supermarkets at the time of testing during April-August 2024:

These were on sale in German supermarkets during our test period:

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

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

In 2021, a Patti Group factory was raided by Italian military police on suspicion of fraud – it was reported by the Italian press that Chinese and other foreign tomatoes were being passed off as Italian.

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

As part of our investigation into Patty, an undercover BBC reporter posed as a businessman looking to place a large order with the firm. Invited by Pasquale Petti, General Manager of Italian Food, to visit a company factory in Tuscany, part of the Petti Group, our reporter asked him if Petti uses Chinese tomatoes.

“Yeah… nobody in Europe wants Chinese tomatoes. But if that’s okay with you, we’ll find a way to produce the best possible value, using Chinese tomatoes.”

The reporter’s hidden camera also captured an important detail – a dozen blue barrels of tomato paste lined up inside the factory. A label seen on one of them reads: “Sinjiang Guannong Tomato Products Co Ltd, prod date 20-08-2023.”

In response to our inquiry, Petty Group told us it did not buy from Xinjiang Guanong because the company was sanctioned by the United States for using forced labor in 2020, but said it did buy a Chinese called Bazu. Bought tomato paste from the company regularly. Red fruit.

The firm “did not engage in forced labor,” Petty told us. However, our investigation found that Bazhou Red Fruit shares a phone number with Xinjiang Guanong, and other evidence, including analysis of shipping data, suggests that Bazhou is its shell company.

Petty added: “In the future we will not import tomato products from China and will increase monitoring of suppliers to ensure compliance with human and worker rights.”

While America has strict legislation. To ban all Xinjiang exports, Europe and Britain take a lenient approach, allowing companies to self-regulate only to ensure that forced labor is not used in the supply chain.

This is now going to change in the European Union, Who has committed to strong laws.says Chloe Cranston, from the NGO Anti-Slavery International. But she warns that it will make the UK even more likely to become a “dumping ground” for the products of forced labour.

“The UK’s Modern Slavery Act is, unfortunately, not very fit for purpose,” she says.

A spokesperson for the UK Department for Business and Trade told us: “We are clear that no company in the UK should have forced labor in its supply chain… We take our view on how the UK deals with forced labor and Can best deal with environmental damage in supply chains are continuously evaluated and work to raise global labor standards.

Journalist and food advocate Dario Dongo says the findings expose a wider problem – “the true cost of food”.

“So when we see [a] Low cost we have to ask ourselves. What is behind it? What is the actual price of this product? Who is paying for this?”