Beloved company in forced labour controversy
Sunday, 26 January 2025
Wattie’s — officially Heinz Wattie’s Limited — is about as wholesome as it gets in terms of brand: maker of healthy foods, employer of hundreds of people, a history spanning almost a century. But a major new piece of international research lists the company as one of 70 global brands at risk of being tainted by forced labour practices in China. Paula Penfold investigates.
It seems such an innocuous ingredient, tomato paste, slapped on pizza, thrown in pasta; it works in just about anything, a staple product for the beloved household brand eponymously founded by Sir James Wattie in 1934.
A few mergers and acquisitions later, the company now trades as Heinz Wattie’s, a subsidiary of the American giant Kraft Heinz, but it’s still affectionately and familiarly known by most New Zealanders as Wattie’s, a regular fixture on lists of most trusted brands.
New research might dull the glow.
Authors of a 136-page report for the International Network for Critical China Studies trawled Chinese state reports, academic papers, global supply chain data and witness reports to compile a list of 72 international and 18 Chinese companies at risk of being implicated in forced labour, the coercive transfer of land-use rights, and forced assimilation in agricultural production in Xinjiang.
Heinz Wattie’s is one of them, accused of importing forced labour-tainted product into New Zealand.
Xinjiang is a province in northwest China, home to the ethnic Uyghur population. It’s a place of geographic beauty and lush bounty: Xinjiang supplies between a quarter and a third of the world’s tomatoes.
Xinjiang is also the centre of what is variously described as the persecution and genocide of the Uyghur people and other Muslim minorities: arbitrary arrests, mass detention, mass surveillance, family separations, even forced sterilisations.
Leading researcher of Xinjiang and co-author of the new report, Dr Adrian Zenz, says the world is witnessing “what appears to be the world’s largest system of state-imposed forced labour”.
What’s that got to do with Wattie’s?
The concern is over the company’s importation of tomato paste from Xinjiang.
The report examines the practices of several huge tomato-producing companies including COFCO (China Oil and Foodstuffs Corporation), a state-owned food processing company.
In 2023, the report says, Heinz Wattie’s received at least seven shipments from COFCO Tunhe Tomato, one of the world’s top producers and exporters of tomato-based products.
Zenz told Stuff it is “one of the worst companies in Xinjiang in terms of being implicated in the atrocities”.
In December 2023 the US blacklisted COFCO over Uyghur forced labour. While this blacklist was after Heinz Wattie’s had already received the seven shipments, Zenz says there’s no excuse for companies not already knowing risks of exploitation in their supply chains.
“In 2023 we know for sure they [Wattie’s] received shipments of tomato paste, when the forced labour programme in Xinjiang was well known. The United States had enacted the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act [in 2021]. So I think consumers need to ask hard questions about why they were exposed to a risk of being implicated in one of the largest atrocities the world is currently witnessing.”
So what happened to this tomato paste? Was it sold in New Zealand supermarkets? Have New Zealand consumers unwittingly consumed a product made by forced labourers?
Heinz Wattie’s did not agree to be interviewed, instead providing a written statement in which it acknowledged that, “historically, Wattie’s has used small quantities of tomato paste sourced from China”.
“However, this was stopped before the United States listing in December 2023. We take our responsibility to ethically source products seriously and prohibit the use of forced labour of any kind in our supply chain through our Supplier Guiding Principles.
“Our rigorous compliance framework includes the strictest audit standards in the industry, enforced and monitored with the support of trusted third-party organisations such as Sedex, EcoVadis and LRQA.”
Heinz Wattie’s did not answer Stuff’s questions about what the tomato paste shipments were used for or whether it’s concerned the importation has betrayed New Zealanders’ trust in the company.
A Uyghur New Zealander we’ll call Ali spoke to Stuff on the condition of anonymity, fearing consequences for his family in Xinjiang. “My family would be in custody in a second,” he says, of the risk of speaking out.
He is appalled by the importation.
“I’m disappointed. We are better than that.”
In the absence of answers from the company about what the seven shipments were used for, he can only think the worst.
“It’s actually feeding New Zealand people the blood of hard work, forced laboured Uyghur slaves.”
That might sound hyperbolic, but in a BBC documentary on the production of tomato products with forced labour in China, one worker described being “badly beaten” for not picking enough tomatoes. Some alleged torture, even electrocution.
And there are issues broader than forced labour.
Zenz investigated the mandated transfer of rural land-use rights, where peasants are coerced to surrender the right to use land owned by collectives to companies or intermediate entities.
Often they will then become waged labourers, in some cases working the same land they previously had exclusive rights to, but with no power to decide what to grow and how to grow it.
The report cites government statements that local authorities “liberated” peasants by removing land use rights, sending them to work at industrial sites operated by tomato processing companies.
Workers could be shifted into other industries, regions, or even provinces, through labour transfers arranged by the state.
If they do get to retain their land-use rights, there can be coercion into growing “mandated crops under mandated conditions at mandated prices that may be to their disadvantage”.
And the research details the direct link between Xinjiang’s detention centres (what the Chinese government calls “Vocational Education and Training Centres”) and a coercive agriculture industry.
Internal government documents from the Xinjiang Police Files; a cache of tens of thousands of documents hacked by an anonymous third party and obtained by the report writers, show the detention centres were asked to establish agricultural training bases and greenhouses, where detainees were trained to grow tomatoes and other vegetables, in preparation for coerced employment.
The report also outlines how Xinjiang’s big tomato companies perpetrate coercive state policies: conducting regular home visits, spying on individual households, and identifying people for “re-education” internment or labour transfer.
“At least one large tomato producer subjected transferred ethnic labourers to forced physical examinations and state-driven methods to suppress births,” the report says.
There’s another potential New Zealand connection to the atrocity.
In 2021, Stuff reported the case of Rizwangul NurMuhammad, a Uyghur New Zealander desperately trying to establish the location of her brother, Mewlan, who in 2017 was taken by plain clothes police.
He was sentenced to nine years in prison for “separatist activities”, though it was never specified what those activities were.
Eventually it was established that he was incarcerated at Beiye Prison, run by XPCC, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.
XPCC is also one of Xinjiang's two largest tomato producers.
Zenz says it is “entirely possible that family members of Uyghur New Zealanders are involved in forced labour producing tomato products that ended up back in New Zealand”.
Currently, New Zealand has no specific legislation to prevent the importation of forced labour-tainted products.
In 2021, work was started on a plan of action against modern slavery, with the Modern Slavery Leadership Advisory group established in 2023 to provide advice on new legislation which would require businesses to publicly report how they address exploitation risks in their supply chains.
But last year the Government axed that group and put plans for the new legislation on ice.
Zenz says the lack of legislation leaves New Zealand exposed.
“It’s urgently warranted,” says Zenz. “My research shows that countries that do not take steps to combat slavery end up being dumping grounds.
“If a country does not enact strong and effective legislation to outlaw the import of goods that may be made with forced labour, its citizens are liable to become complicit in the atrocities that we witness around the world. And that's just unacceptable.'
New Zealand co-chairs of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), Labour MP Ingrid Leary and National MP Joseph Mooney, say IPAC is asking “hard questions” of Wattie’s, “because currently in New Zealand there is no other watchdog mechanism to expose slave labour in supply chains.
“The research is concerning, and shows externally-commissioned audits often aren’t credible. IPAC supports a proposed member’s bill on increasing the penalties for modern slavery which is a first step to highlighting how seriously New Zealanders view modern slavery.”
While Heinz Wattie’s says it is no longer importing tomato paste products from China, concerns remain about the relationship between its parent company and COFCO. The report describes an ongoing strategic partnership between Kraft Heinz and COFCO, collaborating on development, cultivation techniques, and training, and that many tomatoes in Xinjiang are grown from Kraft Heinz seeds.
To Ali, the Uyghur New Zealander, the reputational risks should motivate the company to axe all ties.
“I know Kiwi people, I’ve lived in this country for a very long time, and I know what their core values are, what they stand for. Our people have a strong stand on human rights, on ethical actions, and we have such a good reputation. That should come first before profit.”
The Chinese Embassy did not respond to Stuff’s questions but China state media reports on the tomato production issue say there is no forced labour in Xinjiang.