November 6, 2018 — First, Chicken of the Sea came forward as a whistleblower. Last year, Bumble Bee Foods pleaded guilty, followed by StarKist Co. in October.
The big three tuna companies — familiar names on the shelves of your nearest grocery store — have been under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for keeping the price of canned and pouched tuna artificially high.
It’s a high-level antitrust case involving lots of big companies, but it’s also the kind of case that reaches all the way down to the grocery store checkout and family budgets.
Thomas Burt, an attorney with the law firm Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz, said with consumer cases like this, “Psychologically, these hit home in a way that others don’t.”
“If a group of companies fix the price of basic industrial chemicals or computer chips that we use in the devices around us, the psychological distance is further. We don’t feel it as directly,” Mr. Burt said. “This is a product that people have a relationship with. They know this brand. They’ve eaten it since they were kids.
“It’s a kick in the pants for consumers,” he said.
It remains to be seen if consumers will be directly compensated in some way, and, if so, how.
The packaged seafood market, which also includes salmon, shrimp, clams and the like, is a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States. Tuna represents about 73 percent of the market and generates about $1.7 billion in annual sales, according to court documents.