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Comment by femto | Hacker News Reader

Check their tomato paste. It turns out that nearly every tomato paste in Australia comes from Xinjiang in China, including those marked as Australian or Italian. Simplot (Leggos), the big US company, was the worst offender, so it's possible that tomato paste in Costco's US stores has been produced in Xinjiang using slave labour, irrespective of what the label says.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-27/australian-tomatoes-l...

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According to this none of the samples tested from US retailers contained Chinese tomatoes. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crezlw4y152o It seems like the US ban on Xinjiang is working

Thanks for that informative link. I looked to see if there was any data beyond the ABC article and didn't find it. Some of the truthful brands listed in the BBC article are available where I live. Kudos to the US that their labels match their contents.

The ABC just broke their story a few days ago. There will continue to be fallout over the next few months or years (much like their last one, where they found that many sunscreens did not meet their SPF ratings, a hot topic in the skin cancer capital of the world)

(edit: whoops, Choice did the SPF rating investigation. ABC just did a lot of reporting on it)

While it could of course be produced in Xinjiang without using "slave labor," the US government banned those tomatoes in 2021 because of that risk:

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/cbp-issu...

If Costco were circumventing the ban it'd be a pretty big deal. I couldn't google up any indications that they are, so on balance I'd say it's "possible" in the same way my winning the lottery is possible. Can't rule it out, but reasonable people should probably bet against it.

TIL: Xinjiang tomatoes are something like 15% of the global market!

> TIL: Xinjiang tomatoes are something like 15% of the global market!

China consumes 37% of the world’s tomatoes. 80% of China’s processed tomatoes are from xinjiang. Fresh tomatoes are generally grown locally, but that is true around the world.

China _produces_ 37% of the world's tomatoes, not consumes.

> It turns out that nearly every tomato paste in Australia comes from Xinjiang in China

I think that might be a bit of a strong assertion, from your article there -

"It analysed 221 processed tomato products from 39 brands, including paste, passata and diced tomato.

Twenty-two per cent of the products failed country-of-origin testing, while a further 6 per cent were flagged for further testing."

So while 28 percent is scandalous, and those companies need to face consequences, the other 72 percent seem to be genuine.

A big chunk of that 72% are legitimately labeled "Made in China" or niche brands. The brands that failed, plus the products that are actually labeled "Made in China", dominate Australia's four supermarkets with the majority of the market share. I've just done my weekly shop, so trawled their web sites looking for alternatives.

Summarising the Australian situation, taking the 4corners results into account, the following non-Chinese tomato pastes are available:

Coles (29% market share): 1 x 140g premium product in a tube (expensive with reduced market share) out of about 20 products.

Woolworths (38% market share): 1 x 140g premium product (Mutti) in a tube (expensive with reduced market share) out of about 20 products.

Aldi (10% market share): None out of about 4 products

IGA (7% market share): 5 of 16 products, being the same premium brands that Coles and Woolworths sell.

Maybe qualify my comment with "by market share and availability". The effect is that if you stand in front of an Australian supermarket shelf, every product, bar one or two in the corner, come from China. China is a proxy for Xianjing, in that sources say 80%-90% of tomato paste from China comes from Xinjiang.

Hence the assertion I made.

Market share data: https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/supermarkets-inquiry_1....

Xianjing percentages: https://tomatonews.com/countries/china/

> Woolworths (38% market share): 1 x 140g premium product (Mutti) in a tube (expensive with reduced market share) out of about 20 products.

Eh ...

"Well-known tomato brands that passed country-of-origin testing include Mutti, SPC, Woolworths, Providore D'Italia and Annalisa. Diced tomato cans and passata from Leggo's and Coles also passed."

So here are 4 tomato pastes in woolworths that would seem to pass the test of not being from China and not being liars, just from a quick search (and I have seen all these in my local) -

https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/290303/mut... https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/218066/mut... https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/901431/mac... https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/150875/pro...

I usually buy Mutti stuff because it's low-ish salt, and that claims to come from Italy and wasn't implicated in the report here. And while I understand those are at the 'premium' end, it's not like it's one product on the end of the shelf either.

It's true that "Leggo" occupies a lot of the shelf space and a lot of the cheaper 'own brand' stuff is labelled as coming from China. And coles appears to be in a weirder/worse spot that woollies, with only Providore being Italian and two brands of turkish tomato paste, which is interesting.

It's sad that I can't find an Australian tomato paste that isn't a liar.

So I'm still not fully on board with "nearly every", OTOH thanks for the further information. I shall continue to try to avoid these products!

The above thread was about quality issues, not ethical issues such as “slave labor” (a term somehow reserved for certain countries, even though most countries use unfree prison labor, including the US and much of the EU).

It's about trust.

Our vocational training program, your prison labor, their slave labor.

Difficult to distinguish between actual slave labour and China-is-bad propaganda.

Harm to the end user: none^

Benefits to the end user: more affordable tomato paste

Government action to prevent slave labour products entering Australia: none^

^close enough.

Negatives to end user: unknown pesticides or banned pesticides.

No propaganda - lack of validation, evidence and trust

What does slavery, real slavery or anti-China propaganda fake slavery, have to do with the with the presence or absence of pesticides, banned or otherwise?

It is perfectly legal to sell Chinese tomatoes in Australia (which is not necessarily a good thing, re: forced labour in Italy and China). The fraud is mislabeling them as Australian or similar, denying consumers from making their own ethical choice. Which is your harm to the end user and generally enforced by the ACCC.

If you're going to start talking about mislabelling products, you're going doing a rabbit hole of hundreds if not thousands of products sold in reputable stores. Look up how FDA labels for Organic, Grass fed, Pasture raised, etc. are used through out the industry in the US and the world. You should also look up the requirements for "Made in X" labels for consumer products. Playing with word and people's emotions on what those labels mean when making a purchase decision is as old as commerce itself. Don't for a moment think of the US or a Western country being rightious about this.

How the FDA and US labels things is not relevant to Australia with its more consumer focused laws and the ACCC.

The information this is based on is reporting from the Australian ABC TV program Four Corners.

The ABC is a know, as in they don't even try to pretend propriety, propaganda outlet of the Australia Albanese federal Government.

I'm not saying this is definitely propaganda, but there's a non-zero chance it is.

The Albanese government has been very open about attacking industry.

It is anti-industry to report fraud and provide evidence to government enforcement bodies and shame them into acting? This is anti-government propaganda if anything, given the lack of proactive monitoring and serious enforcement. If anyone in politics benefits from this it will be One Nation or maybe the Nationals if they pick up on the Protect Australian Farmers angle, while sitting government gets to explain why they had failed to acknowledge the problem or act. The forced labor issue will be a particular thorn in their side, given it is one of the excuses for the latest round of US tariffs.

Chinese workers earn more than workers from latin America. At least their government isn't slave for billionaires

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