U.K. grocery chain halts supply of Christmas cards

Chinese factory alleged to be using prison labour

U.K. grocery giant Tesco suspended its supply of Christmas cards from a Chinese factory and said it was investigating a newspaper report that prison labour was used in their production.

All the cards produced by the factory have been withdrawn from sale, Tesco said in a statement on Sunday. If the investigation shows a breach of the company’s rule against using prison labour, then the factory will be removed from Tesco’s suppliers list “immediately and permanently.”

The Sunday Times reported earlier that a six-year-old girl from south London discovered a note in her Tesco Christmas cards that read: “We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu Prison China. Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organization.”

The Chinese supplier was independently audited as recently as last month and there was no evidence that rules had been broken, Tesco said.

“We abhor the use of prison labour and would never allow it in our supply chain,” the company said.

The note, written inside a card featuring a cat in a Santa hat on the front, asked whoever found it to contact Peter Humphrey. Humphrey is a former journalist who spent 23 months in the same prison on what he calls bogus charges that were probably triggered by his work in China as a corporate fraud investigator. The girl’s father researched the name online and contacted Humphrey, who then wrote the story for the Times.