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

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 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.

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 German and UK 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 those 10 made by Petti, these were for sale in UK supermarkets at the time of testing from April-August 2024:

These were for sale in German supermarkets, during our testing period:

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 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.

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 US has introduced strict legislation to ban all Xinjiang exports, Europe and the UK 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, which has committed to stronger laws, says Chloe Cranston, from the NGO Anti-Slavery International. But she warns this will make it even more likely that the UK will become “a dumping ground” for forced labour products.

Outside the UK, watch the Eye Investigations documentary Blood on the Shelves on YouTube

“The UK Modern Slavery Act, sadly, is utterly not 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 labour in its supply chain… We keep our approach to how the UK 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?”