168 | What's Going on With Italian-Chinese Tomato Puree? | GM to the Rescue |
Plus, new evidence for sugar taxes
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Tomato fraud by big name retailers? - a BBC investigation leaves more questions than answers;
Throwback: Bananas in Peril;
Food Safety News and Resources;
That’s interesting: sugar taxes actually work?
Food fraud news, emerging issues and recent incidents.
Hello, lovely readers,
Welcome to Issue 168 of The Rotten Apple. And an extra special welcome to 👏👏Steve D. and Kate from Australia👏👏 for becoming paid subscribers, and to 👏👏Ruth and Maria from the UK, C from Pennsylvania, Sigrid from Norway, Paramjit and Andrea 👏👏 and for your continued support. I couldn’t do this without you.
I found writing this week’s big story about questionable supply chains for Italian tomato puree quite intense. The more I delved into the story, the more murky and convoluted it seemed. You were going to get a simple story that went a bit like this:
The trusted British news outlet the BBC has accused some supermarkets of misleading consumers about the origin of their home brand tomato purees, saying they contain ingredients from China. A food testing expert said the BBC’s testing could not be relied on and the supermarkets dispute the findings. But I say it’s entirely possible the supermarket’s Italian supplier(s) had used Chinese ingredients, and this isn’t necessarily fraudulent or illegal.
But things didn’t turn out to be so simple. The more I tried to unpack the BBC’s investigation, the more difficult it became to draw any solid conclusions. I did get some inside information about the analytical testing but mostly had to rely on the BBC’s news article about their investigation, which is missing some key details, making a final ‘takeaway’ quite tricky. Read on for the full story.
Also this week, we revisit the ‘Bananas in Peril’ story from Issue 21, with a good news update. And discover that sugar taxes actually work. Plus, as usual we have food fraud news for paying subscribers and food safety news and resources for everyone.
Have a fabulous week,
Karen
P.S. Got something you’d like me to write about? Or something you have written you’d like me to publish? Use my suggestion box to submit your idea.
Cover image: An AI image maker imagines tomato puree production
Tomato Puree Fraud by Big Name Retailers?
A report published by media outlet the BBC claims that certain Italian tomato purees, available from leading retailers in the United Kingdom and Germany, contain Chinese-grown tomatoes.
If true, some might construe this as provenance fraud and/or mislabeling, however that isn’t necessarily the case. The BBC does not assert that either, instead focussing its report on the Chinese tomato industry’s use of forced labour.
The retailers dispute the findings, and a food testing expert asserts the testing was not robust, saying…
“An interesting piece of investigative journalism let down by what appears to be some less than robust laboratory testing. They appear to test against ONE reference sample of claimed Xinjiang tomato puree. Such a shame. Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis and trace elemental analysis are great techniques but require robust and immutable reference samples to draw sound conclusions". (Alison Johnson, Food Forensics Ltd via LinkedIn.)
Comment: I’ve been in contact with the organisation that performed the tests, Source Certain. They say they did hundreds of analyses to “build out the profile” of the tomato products, as part of a months-long forensic investigation that included markets beyond those mentioned in the BBC report. The results were not based on comparisons with one reference sample, as claimed by Ms Johnson.
What happened
The BBC purchased 64 tomato purees sold in the UK, Germany and the US, including Italian brands and supermarket home (own) brands. Many were produced by a single manufacturer based in Italy.
The majority of samples claimed to contain Italian tomatoes or gave the impression they contained Italian tomatoes, say the BBC, while the remainder (“a few”) did not have any origin claims. The actual label claims were not published in the report.
The BBC reported that all samples from the USA, and samples of top Italian brands contained Italian tomatoes, but 17 of the 64 samples (27 percent) contained Chinese tomatoes.
Comment: I doubt that the British retailers named in the BBC investigation knowingly purchased products with forced-labour-affected supply chains, because it poses a significant risk to their brand reputations. However, it’s highly likely that:
(1) the products do indeed contain China-grown tomatoes and
(2) at least some of the retailers know this.
It’s less likely that the retailers are aware that the Chinese tomato industry is problematic and have joined the dots connecting it to the puree they buy from Italy. Not saying they shouldn’t know, under modern anti-slavery rules, just saying they maybe don’t. Or at least they didn’t know until very recently.
Chinese purees in Italian-made products: plausible
Italian tomato puree companies do indeed buy Chinese tomato puree, says the BBC. It analysed shipping records and found that the company which manufactured 10 of the 17 ‘Chinese tomato’ samples, Petti, received more than 36 million kilograms of tomato paste from Chinese companies between 2020 and 2023.
Petti, a well-known tomato puree manufacturer, was accused of misrepresenting the origin of its ingredients in 2021. It was investigated by Italian authorities, which seized 3,500 tons of canned tomatoes and 977 tons of bulk tomato paste and semi-finished products of foreign origin from its facility.
At the time, authorities said Petti had systematically and fraudulently misrepresented the origin of the tomatoes used in its products by mixing foreign tomato concentrate with semi-finished Italian products and selling them as ‘100% Italian tomato’ and/or ‘100% Tuscan tomato’. Petti denied the accusations and the matter was settled out of court.
In response to the BBC’s recent investigation, Petti told the BBC that it bought Chinese tomato paste but “did not engage in forced labour”. The BBC disagrees, asserting that Petti’s Chinese paste originates in an area where forced labour is a problem, saying that Petti’s supplier is using a shell company to obscure the origin of the paste. Exports from the region, Xinjiang, in China’s northwest, are banned in the US over human rights concerns.
Where’s the fraud?
The legal situation is murky. Chinese-grown tomatoes processed into pastes and purees in Italy could perhaps be legitimately labelled as ‘Italian’ tomato puree in third countries, such as the United Kingdom and Germany, since the Chinese tomatoes would have undergone a significant transformation in Italy.
Chinese-made purees mixed with Italian purees in Italy may also fit the legal definition of ‘Italian’ in third countries, depending on the ratio of Italian to Chinese ingredients, the exact wording on the labels and the specific legal requirements in the country of sale. It obviously wouldn’t be right to use phrases like ‘100% Italian tomato’ on the labels in this scenario.
The Italian puree manufacturer might be committing fraud if it’s lying about its use of Chinese purees to its customers or lying about which part of China they came from or misleading them about the presence of forced labour in its supply chain.
The most likely legal problems for the UK supermarkets in the BBC story are related to compliance with the UK Modern Slavery Act, which requires supply chain transparency for big companies.
Final thoughts
This is a complicated story, with elements of food fraud and modern slavery. It includes questions about the appropriateness and robustness of analytical tests, consumer expectations about what an ‘Italian’ tomato puree should be and potentially misleading statements by a puree manufacturer about the source of its ingredients.
It seems that some UK and German brand owners purchased tomato purees that appear to contain tomatoes from a region of China with known forced labour issues. Some of those brands then marketed the purees as ‘Italian’, using either explicit or implied claims. It’s hard to know if any of this was illegal, fraudulent or in contravention of modern slavery rules without more details.
There is a lot we don’t know about this investigation and its background. We don’t know how much Chinese puree was in any of the products – were they 100% Chinese or only 50%, for example? We don’t know the exact claims on the packs of tomato paste – for example, did any of the packs state ‘100% Italian tomatoes’? We don’t know whether the database of reference materials used in the ‘fingerprint’ test method was suitably robust (and what constitutes ‘robust enough’ anyway?).
We don’t know whether forced labour was actually present in the supply chain of any puree that did originate in China, or whether the puree was just from a problematic region. And we don’t know whether any (or all) of the brand owners caught up in this investigation were deceived by their supplier(s) about the sources of their ingredients.
It’s worth noting that two major British supermarkets, Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer, didn’t have Chinese tomatoes in their products at the time of the sampling (April to August 2024). I wonder if they made different purchasing decisions than their competitors after performing due diligence on the manufacturer Petti?
By the way, background checks on suppliers don’t have to be complicated. I did a Google search of “Petti tomato” today. Two of the top three search results were stories about their 2021 brush with Italian food fraud investigators, which should give any potential customer pause for thought.
Takeaways for food professionals
There is so much to unpack here. The big takeaway is that supply chains are complex: when they intersect with provenance claims such as ‘Italian’, there are pitfalls for food brands.
Misleading claims about the provenance of foods can create compliance risks beyond just food fraud. For example, if a food business is unaware of the true origin of ingredients in its products it could find itself in breach of anti-slavery laws.
Even innocuous-seeming foods like tomato puree can be affected by fraud and forced labour in their supply chains.
Background checks should be part of supplier approvals processes.
In short: 🍏 An investigation by a trusted media outlet revealed that some UK and German supermarkets may have purchased tomato purees that contain tomatoes from a region of China with known forced labour issues 🍏 Some of the products were marketed as ‘Italian’ 🍏 Whether any of this was illegal, fraudulent or in contravention of modern slavery rules is uncertain, as not enough information has been made public 🍏 An Italian tomato puree manufacturer, which made many of the samples said to contain Chinese tomatoes, has previously been accused of fraud by Italian authorities for allegedly falsely claiming its products contained ‘100% Italian tomato’ 🍏 Background checks on new suppliers can reveal potential concerns and should be included in supplier approvals processes 🍏
Sources:
Rudin, M. (2024). ‘Italian’ purees likely to contain Chinese forced-labour tomatoes. BBC [online] 1 Dec. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crezlw4y152o .
Dongo, D. (2021). Petti canned tomatoes, trade fraud. Maxi-sequestration of RACs - FoodTimes. [online] FoodTimes. Available at: https://www.foodtimes.eu/consumer-en/petti-canned-tomatoes-trade-fraud-maxi-sequestration-of-racs/
Throwback: Bananas in Peril
In Issue 21 we discussed the perilous future of bananas - Cavendish bananas, to be precise, the most traded variety of bananas, the world’s most popular fruit.
Cavendish bananas, along with many varieties of cooking bananas, including plantains, are under threat from a fungal disease called Fusarium Wilt Tropical Race 4 (TR4).
Because Cavendish bananas don’t have seeds, every plant in the world is a genetic clone of the original Cavendish banana. This means that all Cavendishs are equally vulnerable to TR4, which has a very high mortality rate.
It’s happened before
The most popular table banana before Cavendish was the Gros Michel. Experts say it was more tasty and more robust than Cavendish. Gros Michel went commercially extinct in the 1960s after crops were destroyed by a different strain of Fusarium Tropical Wilt. Cavendish took over as the table banana of choice because it was resistant to that strain.
GM to the rescue
After decades of development and more than seven years of field trials, the world’s first GM banana was recently approved for commercial production and human consumption in Australia.
The banana, GM Cavendish QCAV-4, has been engineered to be resistant to Fusarium Wilt Tropical Race 4 (TR4).
But does it taste any good?
The answer is yes!
With the fruit officially approved for human consumption, researchers can now tell us what it tastes like. The latest crop, grown in Australia, has been tested and declared delicious.
“It tastes great… like well-grown Cavendish should taste” said Distinguished Professor James Dale, leader of the research team.
Great news for the international banana industry.
Source:
Chester, R. (2024). QUT-developed GM Cavendish QCAV-4: it tastes great. [online] Queensland University of Technology. Available at: https://www.qut.edu.au/news?id=196654.
Food Safety News and Resources
My food safety news and resources posts have no fluff, no filler, no ads, no promos, no junk, just expertly hand-curated food safety news from around the globe, brought to you each week. This week: why are black plastic kitchenware and food containers contaminated with flame retardant chemicals?
Click the preview below to read.
That’s interesting: Sugar taxes actually work
A study on households in four American cities that introduced sweetened beverage taxes has recently been published. It found that the taxes caused significant changes in purchasing behaviour.
The taxes made sweetened beverages more expensive. Lower-income households reduced their purchases of sweetened beverages by almost 50 percent after the taxes were introduced, while higher-income households reduced their purchases by 18 percent.
Below for paying subscribers: Food fraud news, research and incident reports
📌 Food Fraud News 📌
In this week’s food fraud news:
📌 The suitability of analytical methods for assessing food authenticity - reference doc (recommended);
📌 Seafood traceability - new report;
📌 Sheep carcasses, olive oil, expiry date tampering;
📌 Possible lower risks with changes to EUDR exemptions.
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