Class Action: Despite Bumble Bee Foods’ Boasts, Smoked Salmon Filets Actually ‘Low-Quality,’ Farm-Raised

A consumer in California alleges in a just-filed proposed class action lawsuit that Bumble Bee Foods, LLC is not being truthful about the quality of its “Premium Select Medium Red Smoked Salmon Filets in Oil.” The plaintiff behind the 20-page complaint alleges that despite statements on the product’s label, Bumble Bee’s smoked salmon is actually “low-quality, farm-raised Chilean salmon” that has been artificially colored. The case further alleges that the salmon filets are unsmoked, with flavoring added after the fact.

“By making these false, misleading, and unlawful representations, Bumble Bee is able to charge a significant price premium compared to what it could charge for low-quality, colored, smoke-flavored, farm-raised salmon,” the complaint charges.

What are the allegations?

In the complaint, the plaintiff claims Bumble Bee violated California false advertising, unfair competition, and consumer protection laws by passing off its ostensibly premium smoked salmon product as the real deal. The primary issue, the complaint explains, is how packages of Bumble Bee’s salmon filets are labeled.

A sticking point in the lawsuit are the specific design elements of the above label used by the defendant, namely the words “Premium Quality” and “Premium Select Medium Red,” and images of “a medium-red salmon jumping from water with snow-capped mountains and evergreen trees in [the] background,” a scene the case describes as evocative of Alaska. These visual elements, according to the lawsuit, juxtaposed with the words “Premium Quality”—not to mention similar images used on the below cans—lead reasonable consumers to believe the salmon in the top package is wild salmon, a claim the plaintiff argues is patently inaccurate.

From the lawsuit:

“This impression with which reasonable consumers are left, however, is false, because the [Bumble Bee] Medium Red Smoked Salmon is not high-quality, wild-caught salmon, but low-quality, farm-raised salmon, which has been colored via feed to look like wild salmon. In reality, the fish in the [Bumble Bee] Medium Red Smoked Salmon is not wild Alaskan Coho salmon, but farm-raised Chilean Coho salmon (which is later canned in Thailand), also sometimes referred to as ‘Silverfish’.”

To emphasize the difference in meaning between “farm-raised” and fish caught in the wild, the complaint includes the below image depicting how Chilean Coho salmon are brought up, “in floating, open net-cage pens” in sheltered bays.

Per the lawsuit, fish raised in such crowded environments must be “doused with high levels of antibiotics, vaccines, and fungicides” to keep the spread of disease at bay. Another result of over-crowding, the complaint claims, is that the salmon ultimately end up feeding on the feces of other salmon with which they share cages.

Is there anything else I need to know about salmon?

The case goes on to say what’s allegedly in Bumble Bee’s cans of red salmon—“Silverfish” Chilean Coho salmon—looks much different than true wild salmon, as evidenced by the below image from the lawsuit:

The top fish has the coloring of wild Coho salmon as it exists in the ocean, the lawsuit says, with the middle fish showing the color of a male wild Coho salmon typically found near the Pacific Northwest coast. The bottom fish shows the color of a female wild Coho salmon from the same region.

Farm-raised Chilean Coho “Silverfish” salmon, the lawsuit goes on, never takes on any reddish hue and instead looks like this:

Bumble Bee’s alleged misrepresentations of the quality of its salmon filet packages are intentional, the lawsuit claims, citing the labeling of other products—types of canned seafood “for which there may not be a premium on their wild origin”—versus the labeling on cans of smoked salmon. The case elaborates on this through the below label images, with Bumble Bee disclosing on back labels that the smoked oyster and smoked trout products are farm-raised, while the descriptor is nowhere to be found on cans of smoked salmon.

Is the salmon actually smoked, at least?

The salmon itself has not undergone any actual smoking process, the lawsuit asserts.

“Rather, just as color is added to the fishes’ food to mimic the flesh of wild salmon, smoke flavor is added to the salmon to mimic the taste of actual smoking,” the plaintiff claims.

Which consumers does this lawsuit seek to cover?

The proposed class named by the lawsuit is all consumers in the United States who, between November 6, 2013 and whenever the class is notified, bought Bumble Bee Premium Select Medium Red Smoked Salmon Filets in Oil for personal or household use.

Wasn’t Bumble Bee recently sued over similar allegations?

Not quite. If you’ve seen Bumble Bee in the news within the last year with regard to any litigation, the story more than likely stems from a guilty plea submitted by the company to the Department of Justice after the agency investigated and charged—as part of a much larger inquiry into packaged seafood suppliers—the San Diego-headquartered company for fixing the prices of shelf-stable tuna from at least 2011 to 2013. The scandal reportedly cost North America’s largest shelf-stable seafood purveyor in the neighborhood of $25 million.

The complaint can be read below.