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!

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

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.

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 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.