There’s a can of tuna sitting in almost every American pantry right now. Maybe it’s shoved behind the beans you forgot about. Maybe it’s your Tuesday lunch rotation. Either way, there’s a decent chance it came from a company with a track record so ugly it could make you rethink that tuna salad entirely.
Bumble Bee Foods has been one of the biggest names in canned tuna for over a century. But behind that cheerful logo and the familiar yellow label is a story involving criminal price fixing, bankruptcy, forced labor lawsuits, fake sustainability claims, and — oh yeah — tuna that people say tastes terrible. Let’s get into all of it.
The Price Fixing Scandal That Started It All
In 2017, Bumble Bee pleaded guilty to forming a cartel with two other tuna giants — StarKist and Chicken of the Sea — to artificially inflate the price of canned tuna. The scheme ran from at least 2011 through 2013, though Washington state’s attorney general later argued the conspiracy stretched from 2004 through 2015. That’s over a decade of rigging prices on a product that’s supposed to be cheap, everyday food.
Here’s how brazen it was: executives from the three companies called each other, texted, used private emails to dodge detection, and held secret face-to-face meetings at hotels and restaurants to swap internal pricing data. They weren’t even subtle about it. When federal officials stumbled onto the scheme — while reviewing an unrelated merger deal — Chicken of the Sea executives flipped, sought whistleblower protection, and exposed the whole thing.
Bumble Bee got slapped with a $25 million fine. And how much did this cost regular people? Washington state alone estimated consumers got squeezed out of at least $6 million. Nationally, if you were buying a can of chunk light tuna that should’ve cost a dollar, you were likely paying around $1.08 instead. Doesn’t sound like much until you consider millions of cans sold over a decade.
The CEO Who Got Convicted in 30 Minutes
Bumble Bee’s CEO at the time, Christopher Lischewski, didn’t get off easy. In December 2019, a federal jury found him guilty of criminal price fixing. The jury deliberated for roughly 30 minutes. Thirty. The federal judge described the evidence against him as “legion.” Lischewski faced up to 10 years in prison.
Washington became the first state to bring a civil case over the conspiracy, suing both StarKist and Lischewski personally. This wasn’t some vague corporate slap on the wrist — an actual person went down for it. That almost never happens in food industry scandals.
Bankruptcy Hit Fast After That
Less than two years after the guilty plea, Bumble Bee filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company still owed $17 million to the U.S. Department of Justice from the price-fixing fine. At the top of its creditor list sat FCF Co., a Taiwan-based fishing conglomerate, owed over $50.5 million in business debt, plus the DOJ’s $17 million tab.
FCF ultimately bought Bumble Bee’s assets for around $925 million — $275 million in cash plus $638.5 million in assumed debt. For context, London-based private equity firm Lion Capital had bought Bumble Bee back in 2010 for $980 million. So the brand lost value while simultaneously getting caught cheating customers.
Phil Lempert, founder of supermarketguru.com, didn’t mince words about it. He told reporters that Bumble Bee “just has not progressed and has not been innovative.” He called the brand “irrelevant” — a company that didn’t understand what consumers wanted and didn’t deliver for them.
Americans Were Already Eating Way Less Canned Tuna
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Canned tuna consumption in the U.S. dropped 42 percent per capita from 1989 to 2016, according to USDA data. In 1989, the average American ate close to four pounds of canned tuna a year. By 2016 that number had fallen to 2.1 pounds.
People started wanting fresher food. Fresh tuna steaks got more popular. Americans branched out to other types of seafood. The classic tuna sandwich lunch — once a staple in every office break room — started feeling outdated. And right when the industry needed to fight for relevance, Bumble Bee was busy fixing prices instead of fixing its product.
Then Came the Forced Labor Lawsuit
In March 2025, four Indonesian fishermen filed a lawsuit against Bumble Bee alleging the company violated U.S. human trafficking laws by importing seafood caught using forced labor. This is believed to be the first case of fishing boat slavery brought against a U.S. seafood company.
One of the fishermen, Muhammad Syafi’i, was hired in 2021 as a cook on a ship that supplied fish directly to Bumble Bee. He says he was physically abused and forced to work in dangerous conditions. When he got seriously burned in the kitchen, he claims he was left lying on a bench in agony, denied food, water, and medical care.
The four men worked on three different fishing vessels supplying tuna to Bumble Bee. Like many migrant workers in the global fishing industry, they were hired through recruiting firms that withheld big chunks of their salaries as “repayment” for administrative costs — a practice called debt bondage. They were threatened with massive fines if they tried to quit. While at sea, the men say they were physically abused and held against their will.
The global tuna fishing industry is worth roughly $40 billion, according to Pew Trusts. Accountability for labor abuses in it is almost nonexistent because the work happens at sea, relies on migrant workers, and involves supply chains so tangled that tracing responsibility is extremely difficult.
Those “Sustainable” Labels Might Be Garbage Too
A class action lawsuit also accused Bumble Bee of falsely advertising certain tuna and salmon products as “certified sustainable seafood.” Products like Wild Caught Pink Salmon, Wild Selections Solid White Albacore Tuna, and others carry the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) blue tick certification — that little logo that’s supposed to tell you the fish was caught responsibly.
The lawsuit claims Bumble Bee uses large-scale fishing methods — purse seiners and gillnets — that indiscriminately capture and crush non-target species like dolphins, whales, seals, sharks, sea turtles, and juvenile fish. The complaint also points out a nasty conflict of interest: fisheries pay the MSC anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 to use its ecolabel, and licensing revenue makes up about 80 percent of MSC’s income. The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation, which supposedly helps fisheries meet MSC standards, is controlled and funded by tuna industry giants — including Bumble Bee.
So the company accused of labor abuses and price fixing is also helping run the organization that certifies it as sustainable. Cool.
The Tuna Doesn’t Even Taste Good
After all that, you’d at least hope the tuna itself was decent. It’s not. In blind taste tests, Bumble Bee’s albacore packed in water has been described as looking “totally dried out and pre-chewed” the moment you pop the lid. One tester reportedly couldn’t even form words to express their displeasure — just tight-lipped head shaking.
The oil-packed version isn’t much better. It contains soybean oil and vegetable broth, and while it comes out in big square chunks, they’re so dry you need to add extra moisture to make them edible. In a ranking test, the albacore had a strange “sawdust-like flavor” that matched its dry texture. At $1.94 for a 5-ounce can, it’s cheap — but it tastes like it.
Some consumers have reported cans with more water than actual fish. Others describe getting a mushy mess instead of the firm, flaky chunks you’d expect. Reports of finding tuna better suited for cat food than a sandwich are not uncommon.
StarKist Isn’t Exactly Innocent Either
Bumble Bee’s main competitor, StarKist, was part of the same price-fixing conspiracy. StarKist controls about 40 percent of the packaged tuna market and has been the number one tuna provider for a long time. But the brand’s Chunk Light Tuna in Water has become something of a punching bag online.
Reddit users have called it out repeatedly. One said they made a big batch of tuna salad and “something about it was off.” Another said the chunk light tasted like raw fish — “highly fishy” in the worst way. Multiple customers have found bones in their cans and posted pictures as proof. One person said they almost choked on a bone; StarKist’s response was a coupon for two free cans.
In taste tests, StarKist’s standard offerings get hammered for a “cleaning shack smell” and mushy texture. At $1.69 for five ounces, testers say you’re paying for something that needs to be buried under mayo, celery, and relish just to become tolerable.
So What’s Actually Worth Buying?
The canned tuna aisle is more complicated than it used to be. The two biggest brands in the country have both been caught fixing prices, and one of them is now facing allegations of profiting from forced labor. Premium brands like Wild Planet ($5 a can) market themselves on sustainability, but testers have noted an acrid, bitter taste — possibly from rancid olive oil — and an overwhelming fishy aftertaste. Safe Catch, which advertises having the lowest mercury levels and tests every single tuna, costs $4.14 for five ounces but delivered a metallic, overly salty flavor in testing.
The one bright spot? StarKist’s flavored and specialty products actually fare better. Their E.V.O.O. Solid Yellowfin Tuna with Lemon Dill in Extra Virgin Olive Oil ranked as a top-rated product overall. The general rule seems to hold: yellowfin packed in olive oil beats chunk light packed in water almost every time.
But knowing what we now know about how these companies operate — the backroom deals, the human cost, the fake sustainability badges — a can of tuna suddenly feels like a much heavier thing to toss in your cart.
