Penneys and Dunnes Stores suppliers exposed by RTÉ for using cotton linked to forced labour

An exposé on major Irish retailers and who supplies their cotton will be revealed by RTÉ Investigates tonight.

The documentary RTÉ Investigates: Forced Fast Fashion will expose retailers such as Penneys, Dunnes Stores, Tesco, and Marks and Spencer, among others, for importing hundreds of tons of cotton fabric in 2024 from two companies linked to the Uyghur forced labour camp in China.

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The RTÉ investigation by reporter Joe Galvin and producer/director John Cunningham found that the two Chinese companies, the Esquel Group and Jiangsu Lianfa Textiles, have long-established operations in Xinjiang, a region that grows up to 30 percent of the world’s cotton and is home to a persecuted minority group called the Uyghurs.

The Uyghurs have been subject to “severe human rights violations”, according to the UN, including mass arbitrary detention, rape, forced abortion and forced sterilisation.

RTÉ Investigates verified video footage of Uyghur workers at both companies' sites as recently as December 2024, and obtained up-to-date corporate records to show their ongoing ownership of farms and factories in Xinjiang. The companies did not respond to requests for comment.

Both of these companies supply cotton to factories which supply clothing to major Irish retailers.

Tesco, Penneys, and Marks and Spencer have all publicly vowed to not source Xinjiang cotton, but RTÉ Investigates found that those vows were underwritten by certifications and testing methods that allowed untraceable cotton to flood into supply chains. Dunnes Stores has no public position on the issue.

One certification body in particular, Better Cotton, told RTÉ Investigates that the system used by Tesco, Marks and Spencer, and Dunnes Stores – called mass balance – was “not designed, and cannot be used, to give assurances about the actual cotton that is used in a product.”

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Human rights lawyer with the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region, Patricia Carrier told RTÉ Investigates that Better Cotton “can be mixed or blended with what they call conventional cotton very early on in the supply chain, and that includes cotton from the Uyghur region.”

Dr Len Wassenaar, a leading expert in the type of testing used by the retailers said:

“Mixing and blending, that is going to be a huge problem for using any isotopic or geochemical fingerprint... You could have a cotton from the US mixed with a cotton from China and [they] might be very different from each other isotopically. And if you mix them together, of course, it's just going to be a mixture of the two, which is a meaningless result.”

Tesco, Penney’s and Marks and Spencer told RTÉ Investigates that they received declarations from the Bangladeshi factories that the cotton used in their clothes was not from Xinjiang. The retailers did not elaborate on how this information was authenticated. Dunnes Stores provided no information about its clothing supply chain to RTÉ Investigates.

Experts consulted by RTÉ Investigates said much more work was needed to ensure supply chains were kept free from Uyghur forced labour.

Patricia Carrier said:

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“We need to see mapping all the way down to raw material level because that's where most of the more egregious human rights harms are happening...It's at the bottom of the supply chain, and so it is very important that companies are transparent and that they provide more disclosure.”

The programme will also detail links between the online fast fashion giant Shein, a Chinese State-backed textile park and Xinjiang cotton companies.

Watch RTÉ Investigates: Forced Fashion tonight at 9:35pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player.