March 19, 2020 — Consumers bracing against Covid-19 have raised demands not only for health and safety products but also for many food staples, including tuna. According to a recent National Public Radio report, tuna sales were up more than 31 percent last week compared to the same time last year.
StarKist Samoa, located in the U.S. Territory of American Samoa, supplies tuna for the U.S. market.
March 19, 2020 — US tuna canner StarKist & Co and the fleet that catches its tuna are lamenting fishing restrictions in the American Samoa region they say will make it difficult to continue to supply tuna at a time when shelf-stable product sales are up sharply due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
StarKist, according to a press release published by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, is seeing higher demand for its products, which is creating more work for its StarKist Samoa plant in American Samoa.
“The StarKist Samoa operation relies on the US tuna fishermen, and direct fish deliveries to the cannery are a major component of our business model,” the company said. “We have seen an increase in sales that has been attributed to the Covid-19 impact, and we are doing our best to keep up with the demand. It’s important to note that the global impact of Covid-19 highlights the importance of keeping US suppliers and producers in business to ensure we can sustain the tuna supply for US consumers.”
February 18, 2020 — Locally based fishermen who supply the lone Starkist tuna cannery in American Samoa are facing a perfect storm of obstacles that are threatening their economic survival. A battle is now on in the U.S. territory to fend off those looming challenges, from rising fuel costs to international competition. Special correspondent Mike Taibbi reports with support from Pacific Islanders in Communications.
Mike Taibbi:
Morning prayers at the start of the old cannery’s 6 AM shift. Charlie Tuna’s cannery: Starkist. Some 2,400 workers troop to this 56-year old operation every day.
‘Let us celebrate,’ they sing in unison. ‘Bless our workers,’ implores a supervisor, adding ‘as well as our leaders, and management.’ Those leaders of an iconic American brand serve a company that’s now owned and managed by a South Korean conglomerate Dongwon.
Inside the cannery, trays are loaded with several types of thawed, cooked, cooled and ready to process tuna.
January 27, 2020 — A proposed settlement between a class of commercial food-preparers and Chicken of the Sea, one of the three U.S. canned tuna companies found to have conspired to fix the prices of their products, has been rejected by the judge overhearing the case.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California Judge Janis L. Sammartino rejected a payment of USD 6.5 million (EUR 5.9 million), saying it is not clear the settlement provides enough money to those harmed by the price-fixing.
December 4, 2019 — Christopher Lischewski, the former president and CEO of Bumble Bee Foods, was convicted on 3 December, 2019, of helping to orchestrate a price-fixing conspiracy between Bumble Bee, Chicken of the Sea, and StarKist, the so-called “Big Three” players in the U.S. canned tuna sector.
Lischewski was found guilty of one count of price-fixing by a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of USD 1 million (EUR 900,000). His sentencing has been set for 8 April, 2020. Lischewski’s conviction may also open him up as a target of civil lawsuits filed by parties who overpaid for canned tuna as a result of the price-fixing, according to Eric Snyder, chairman of the bankruptcy practice at Wilk Auslander, a New York City-based law firm.
October 28, 2019 — “The long-term survivability of the cannery is a key motivation for the positions that we take” during “difficult negotiation” for fishing days at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC).
This is according to NOAA fisheries deputy assistant for regulatory programs, Samuel Rauch III, who served in the last two years as one of the commissioners for the US government on the WCPFC, during a news briefing with local reporters on Tuesday, following the opening of the 180th Meeting of the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council at the Gov. Tauese P.F. Sunia Ocean Center.
In his remarks at the opening of the meeting, Lt. Gov. Lemanu Palepoi Sialega Mauga pointed to the critical issue — that NOAA reconsider its decision to close off fishing by the US purse seiner fleet in the US-EEZ and on the high seas — referred to as Effort Limit Area for Purse Seine (ELAPS) — for the rest of calendar year 2019, effective Oct. 9th.
Lemanu reminded the Council that the closure “will affect our fish cannery, and have a major negative economic impact on our tuna-dependent American Samoa.”
October 25, 2019 — If tuna canner StarKist & Co departs American Samoa for a location with cheaper labor costs as the company has previously warned, the impact on the US territory’s economy would be substantial.
The damages could reduce the gross domestic product of the 55,000-resident territory by some $200 million, according to a report from the territory’s Department of Commerce.
The report, presented at a recent meeting of the Western Pacific Fisheries Management Council, indicates that a closure of StarKist’s cannery, the island’s largest employer, would result in the loss of 4,000 direct and indirect jobs, one-fourth of its labor force.
The cannery is responsible for 80% of American Samoa’s exports and 24% of its imports. It “effectively” subsidizes the territory’s shipping costs by 40% and its fuel imports by around 30%, the report states.
September 27, 2019 — Consumers who are part of a class-action lawsuit that Starkist agreed to settle in 2015 will get less than the tuna supplier originally agreed to pay.
The lawsuit, which claimed that StarKist was underfilling its five-ounce cans by a few tenths of an ounce, was settled out of court, with Starkist admitting no fault. As a result of the suit, residents of the United States who bought certain tuna products could obtain either USD 25.00 (EUR 22.84) in cash or USD 50.00 (EUR 45.68) worth of coupons for Starkist tuna.
September 12, 2019 — StarKist & Company has been ordered to pay a criminal fine of USD 100 million (EUR 90.3 million) for its role in a tuna price-fixing conspiracy, the statutory maximum fine.
The decision, which was announced by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on 11 September, comes after the court and the company wrangled over the monetary amount of the fine. StarKist’s attorneys had been pushing to have the fine lowered to USD 50 million (EUR 45.1 million), calling the decision “life or death” for the company, while prosecutors had been pushing for a full fine based on the company’s recent investment in TechPack Solutions, an India-based can and bottle technology firm.
May 30, 2019 — Soon after a U.S. pediatric doctors’ group said that children need to eat more seafood, the Seafood Nutrition Partnership (SNP) delivered some hopeful news for the cause, confirming that its recent marketing campaign targeted at mothers was highly successful.
In partnership with seafood suppliers such as Starkist, Trident, Bumble Bee, and Verlasso, the coupon and digital campaign that ran for eight weeks during Lent generated a 300 percent return on investment, SNP said. The organization’s investment of USD 100,000 (EUR 90,000) produced approximately USD 300,000 (EUR 269,000) in sales growth, SNP President Linda Cornish told SeafoodSource.
Notably, sales of seafood in supermarkets in Indianapolis, Indiana, where the pilot campaign took place, rose 2.4 percent during the promotional period. Frozen finfish soared more than 11 percent, far outperforming national sales growth of less than 3 percent, according to SNP.
“We surveyed local moms and poured over a lot of data to really understand the audience. We found that Indy-area moms like seafood and they want to eat it more, but they didn’t think their families would eat it,” Cornish said.