This is not the most serious, since this vast scam is carried out in disregard of environmental rules and human rightssince the BBC reports the forced labor from the repression of the Uighurs in this massive production of sauces.
The Petti group in the viewfinder
The editorial team advises you
China alone provides around a third of the world tomato production. These cultures predominate in the Xinjiangthe region of China where the Uyghur populations have been most harshly repressed. “Their production is linked to the forced labor of Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities,” reveal the two journalists who signed the investigation.
“Their production is linked to the forced labor of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities. »
They even retrace the fruit's railway journey, before becoming sauce: “Kazakhstan”, “Azerbaijan” then “Georgia”, before being shipped to Italy, their last stop. Over there, the Petti groupthe main customer for Chinese shipments, takes care of industrial processing into sauce.
17 suspected products
The editorial team advises you
“Our investigation tested 64 different tomato purees sold in the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States, comparing them in the laboratory to samples from China and Italy,” details the investigation.
Result : 17 productsfrom brands sold by British and German retailers, such as Lidl to name but a few, are likely to contain Chinese tomatoes but qualified as Italian, including under the organic brand.
In 2021, Libération recalls in an article, the United States “imposed a general ban on the importation of tomato products from the region, due to the high probability of forced labor”.
A gesture not eloquent enough to dissuade Petti from purchasing more than 36 million kilos of tomato paste from China between 2020 and 2023.
