Japanese ketchup king stops importing Xinjiang tomatoes

According to foreign reports, Kagoome, Japan's leading tomato paste producer, has stopped importing tomatoes from Xinjiang, China .

It is reported that last year, Kagome had stopped importing tomato paste grown in Xinjiang for use in certain sauce products, and the imported tomatoes will be used up by the end of this year.

Foreign media said that Kagome is the first major Japanese company to stop doing business because of Xinjiang . Prior to this, many Western brands including H&M and Nike have stopped importing Xinjiang cotton.

A Kagome official said: "As quality and costs increase, human rights issues have become a factor in decision-making." In addition, the company's publicity department said that factors such as quality, procurement stability, and cost are also taken into consideration.

In addition, Kagome has been announcing on its website that its raw materials are produced in Xinjiang, but it also wrote that Kagome has been regularly inspecting factories and fields in Xinjiang, saying that the tomatoes used in the past were not produced in an environment that violated human rights.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, in 2019, China was the world's largest tomato producer, with an output of 62.76 million tons, accounting for about 35% of global production.

In Xinjiang, the abundant sunshine and temperature difference between day and night in summer make it particularly suitable for growing tomatoes. According to the English website of China Daily in July 2019, in Xinjiang, relevant enterprises can process 3.8 million tons of tomatoes a year, and the annual output of tomato products here exceeds 650,000 tons, accounting for 90% of the total output in the country.

It is understood that on September 8, 2020, Trump announced a restriction order on cotton and tomatoes from Xinjiang during his administration . On January 13 this year , he used human rights as an excuse to impose restrictions on cotton and tomato products from Xinjiang. Familiar excuses, familiar routines, but lies are still lies no matter how many times they are repeated.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian once responded that the so-called "forced labor" issue in China's Xinjiang is completely a "lie of the century" fabricated out of thin air by the United States and other individual Western countries. On the contrary, the United States' own forced labor issue has been reported in the newspapers from time to time, making it difficult to guarantee the basic safety and health rights of the people.

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