‘Italian’ purees likely to contain Chinese forced-labour tomatoes
Some products described as “Italian” appear to contain Chinese tomatoes, BBC investigation suggests.
In other news, a business owner tried every tactic possible to provide the cheapest product and pocket the most profit.
Mamutjan, a Uyghur teacher who was imprisoned in 2015 for an irregularity in his travel documentation, says he was beaten for failing to meet the high tomato quotas expected of him.
“In a dark prison cell, there were chains hanging from the ceiling. They hung me up there and said ‘Why can’t you finish the job?’ They beat my buttocks really hard, hit me in the ribs. I still have marks.”
"Italian" as a mark of quality is useless anyway. And working conditions in the agrarian sector there are anything but praiseworthy either.
This is not about Italian tomatoes but Chinese. Working conditions in agriculture may be worse than in other sectors, but here we apparently deal with slave-like conditions in Chinese prison-factories. Just read my other comment in this thread or the whole article.
I also think that Italy delivers high quality products in a lot of industries, including in the food sector if I may say so. But this article is about China anyway in the first place.
Sure, but all the products were marked as “Italian” so it’s dishonest product labelling
As an addition on the topic:
Modern slavery in China according to the human rights organization Walk Free
Since 2018, evidence of forced labour of Uyghur and other Turkic and Muslim majority peoples has emerged in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Uyghur Region) [...] Forced labour imposed by private actors is also reported, in addition to forced marriage and organ trafficking, with vulnerability primarily driven by discriminatory government practices.
The 2023 Global Slavery Index (GSI) estimates that 5.8 million people were living in modern slavery in China on any given day in 2021 [...] This estimate does not include figures on organ trafficking, which evidence indicates does occur in China.
Forced labour is exacted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a means of racial and religious discrimination; political coercion and education; and as punishment for holding views ideologically opposed to the state. It is reported alongside mass surveillance, political indoctrination, religious oppression, forced separation of families, forced sterilisation, torture, sexual violence, and arbitrary detention in so-called “re-education camps” within the Uyghur Region [...]
Forced labour is exacted under the guise of vocational training and poverty alleviation – a scheme promulgated by the CCP to raise living standards in “ethnic areas.”
Globally, an estimated 50 million people were living in modern slavery on any given day in 2021. This is nearly one in every 150 people in the world. Walk Free writes:
Modern slavery is hidden in plain sight and is deeply intertwined with life in every corner of the world.
As an American, I demand American forced labor tomatoes!
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/02/03/food-prison-labor-walmart-target
Oh, great.
It's not just vegetable purees but fruits as well. Apple for example.
Tomatoes are a fruit
Did you know that Target, Walmart, Costco, whole foods, McDonald's, Burger King, Victoria's secret, JCPenney, Kmart, Coca-Cola, and many other US companies use forced labor to produce many US goods?
