He allegedly sold purées and concentrates with tomatoes harvested in the area where Beijing persecutes Uyghurs to large-scale retail chains in London. But Petti brand products are actually unrelated to the investigation.
This is what we are told by Italian Food SpA – Gruppo Petti, which in response to the BBC’s investigation according to which, despite a label on tubes sold in English supermarkets where it says “Italian tomato” is actually tomato coming from China, feels he necessarily needs to dot the i’s and lets us know of a real warning he has sent to the English broadcaster (which he is asking, among other things, for the removal of the video).
HERE is our article: New bomb on Italian tomato sauces: the BBC investigation reveals the fraud of the most famous brands
The content of the video, which portrays Petti brand products packaged from Italian tomatoes, may in fact create confusion between the products processed by Italian Food SpA and those of the company Antonio Petti fu Pasquale SpA which are two separate industrial entities which carry out different activities in the food sector. tomato – they write to the BBC. In relation to them, it is necessary to reiterate that for the creation of Italian Food SpA products, tomatoes and derivatives from the People’s Republic of China have never been used, and only fresh Italian tomatoes grown in Tuscany and neighboring regions are used.
The reply addressed to our editorial staff
The BBC investigation tested 64 different tomato purees sold in the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States, comparing them in the laboratory with samples from China and Italy. Among these there were the best Italian brands and the supermarkets’ own brands and many were produced by Campania factories Italian Food SPA, owner of the Petti brand (which, we would like to point out, is not part of the sample analyzed by the BBC).
The BBC investigation, filmed last spring, concerns labor exploitation in some regions of China due to the alleged use of Chinese tomato paste from Xinjiang in some PRIVATE LABEL products packaged last year for the British market by our factory in Campania under the Asda, Tesco and Morrisons brands together with products of the same brands packaged by other factories in Southern Italy.
The quality department of the other Group plant in Campania, which does not produce Petti brand products, also clarified everything through our lawyers at the BBC for the correct product used to produce the different PL brands with Italian tomato and other PL brands with wording EU – NON EU origin of the raw material.
We underline that in the report there is no reference to Petti brand products because in the Italian Food factory in Venturina Terme, Livorno, all Petti products in bottles and boxes are packaged only directly from fresh tomatoes during the summer. We use raw materials from Tuscany for Petti products and from other nearby regions for PRIVATE LABEL products.
This investigation is mainly aimed at European supermarkets which, to reduce the price on the shelves, ask factories producing PL products to have more competitive sales prices by using NON-EU raw materials.
However, nothing is linked to the problem of product traceability.
