First of its kind lawsuit alleges human trafficking by San Diego’s Bumble Bee Seafoods

San Diego-based canned tuna giant Bumble Bee Seafoods has known for years that fishing vessels in its supply fleet used forced labor but failed to stop the practice, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in San Diego federal court that’s believed to be the first ever to allege human trafficking against a U.S. seafood company.

The plaintiffs, four men from rural Indonesian villages, allege they were promised good jobs on long-line tuna boats that are part of Bumble Bee’s “trusted fleet” but instead were subjected to physical abuse, deprived of adequate food and denied medical care. They allege they were ensnared in debt bondage and subjected to fees and paycheck deductions that left them destitute after months of excruciating labor and isolation at sea.

One of the men alleged he was denied medical attention after hot oil from the ship’s kitchen splashed down his body, causing burns so severe that “he felt like his genitals exploded.” Another alleged he was ordered to keep working after a load of fish landed on him, gashing his leg to the bone and overflowing his boot with blood. Two others alleged they were routinely beaten and stabbed with needles by their captains.

The lawsuit alleges Bumble Bee, one of the top U.S. companies in the canned tuna market, violated the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act and was negligent in ensuring that its fleet of suppliers did not use forced labor. The novel lawsuit comes after decades of reports by the U.S. State Department, the United Nations and other organizations that have identified forced labor as a particularly significant problem in the deep-sea fishing industry.

Bumble Bee has “had years and years and years to address this, but they haven’t,” said Agnieszka Fryszman, a prominent human rights attorney from the firm Cohen Milstein who is representing the plaintiffs in a joint effort with Greenpeace and San Diego-based attorneys from the firm Schonbrun Seplow. “There is almost literally no chance that they didn’t know that forced labor was pervasive in their supply chain, given the level and volume of reporting over the last 20 years about this exact problem.”

An attorney speaking on behalf of Bumble Bee said in a statement that the company “will not be commenting on pending litigation.” In its most recent “sustainability impact and progress report” published in 2024, Bumble Bee said it is working with multiple outside organizations to improve its recruitment practices and supply chain oversight.

The lawsuit, citing dozens of studies by government agencies and other organizations, alleged that forced labor is a longstanding problem in the fishing and seafood industry but that Bumble Bee lags even further behind other seafood brands in combatting such practices. Bumble Bee agreed in a legal settlement with a labor rights group two years ago to remove claims from its products and advertising that mentioned a “fair and safe supply chain” and “fair and responsible working conditions.”

Bumble Bee, which had a 41% U.S. market share for canned albacore when it filed for bankruptcy in 2019, is incorporated in Delaware and in 2020 was sold for nearly $1 billion to the Taiwanese tuna-trading giant FCF Co. Ltd. But as a subsidiary of FCF, it remains headquartered in downtown San Diego inside the gates of Petco Park and prominently touts its connections to the San Diego community. In the 2024 company report, every charity and non-profit organization that Bumble Bee said it supported was based in San Diego. That included the San Diego Food Bank, on whose board sits Bumble Bee senior vice president and general counsel Jill Irvin.

Controversy has swirled around Bumble Bee in recent years. Both Bumble Bee and Starkist, another major player in the canned tuna industry, pleaded guilty in 2018 to a price-fixing conspiracy. Bumble Bee agreed to pay a $25 million criminal fine, and its former CEO Christopher Lischewski was found guilty at trial and sentenced to 40 months in custody for his leadership role in the price fixing. Chicken of the Sea, which moved its headquarters from San Diego to El Segundo in 2018, cooperated with the Department of Justice antitrust investigation and was not charged.

The same year FCF purchased Bumble Bee, U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued an order halting all imports from a Taiwanese-based vessel that supplied tuna to FCF. The order cited a suspicion of forced labor on the ship. In a joint statement from FCF and Bumble Bee, the companies did not dispute that the ship in question had supplied FCF and acknowledged that “significant progress must be made to ensure responsible labor practices are followed on all tuna vessels.”

Fryszman said Bumble Bee has not taken the same steps to combat forced labor as have much of the rest of the seafood industry. That includes Bumble Bee and FCF’s continued use of transshipments, a practice by which fishing boats stay in open waters in the Pacific Ocean for months or years at a time by transferring their catch to refrigerated cargo boats.

The practice allows vessels to keep their crew at sea indefinitely where “they are isolated far from land and with little to no means of escaping or obtaining help for — or even reporting — their conditions,” the lawsuit alleged.

According to the lawsuit, Bumble Bee and FCF acknowledged in a self-evaluation as part of a sustainability project that it used transshipments, vessels with a significant migrant workforce and ships where crews were not allowed on shore at least once every 90 days — all key indicators of potential forced labor.

The suit also alleges that Greenpeace USA in 2016 emailed a link to one of its investigations about forced labor on Taiwanese fishing vessels to Lischewski, Bumble Bee’s CEO at the time. The suit alleges that Lischewski replied: “As for the report on Taiwan, I have printed it but have not yet taken the time to read it. It is not high on my priority list.”

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Wednesday each alleged they were subjected to forced labor after being recruited to Bumble Bees’ fleet in 2020 and 2021. They allege they secured the jobs through recruiting agencies that then deducted huge percentages of their salaries to repay recruitment fees. The men say that oftentimes, the recruiting agencies would confiscate their personal documents, making it impossible for them to escape their predicament or find other work, and that they were rushed through the process to sign contracts moments before being taken to sea to work. Once at sea, they worked seven days a week, usually for 18 hours a day or longer, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit’s lead plaintiff, identified only as Akhmad, is a married father of two who claimed his ship’s captain and senior crew beat him too many times to count, sometimes using a metal hook, according to the complaint. Akhmad alleged that the captain also forced him to keep working after his leg was gashed to the bone.

“Akhmad was left to clean and bandage his leg himself, without sterile medical supplies,” the lawsuit alleged. “His leg bled for two weeks and he is still in pain, years later.”

Akhmad alleged that he was promised a salary of $300 per month, but his employer deducted $250 per month for living costs and “to repay recruitment and administrative costs.”

Another plaintiff, identified only as Angga, was originally promised $700 per month but later was rushed through a contract signing process where he learned the pay would be $300 a month, with only $50 left over after deductions, according to the complaint. He also alleged the contract included stiff penalties for not fulfilling the two-year commitment and language that the recruiting agency could go after his family for those penalties if he broke the contract or absconded.

Angga alleged that he and other workers on his ship were frequently beaten and stabbed with a needle, and were often given only rice to eat. Eventually, Angga and other fishermen banded together for a work stoppage, demanding to be allowed to leave the vessel. He alleged the physical abuse by the captain increased in frequency after the work stoppage, but the men were allowed to leave two months later. He alleged that he was never paid for his months of forced labor.

Muhammad Sahrudin was on the same ship as Angga and largely alleged the same deception about his salary and the deductions taken from it. Sahrudin alleged he was stabbed, beaten and whipped by the captain and the senior crew. Like Angga, he participated in the work stoppage and was eventually allowed to go home. “In the end, Sahrudin did not earn any money from his forced labor at sea,” the suit alleged.

Muhammad Syafi’i was recruited as a cook, but once on the ship was also put to work fishing. He alleged that he experienced similar paycheck deductions, fines and penalties as the other plaintiffs. In his job as a cook, he prepared two batches of food at each meal — the captain and senior crew members ate chicken or duck, while the Indonesian fishermen ate inferior food that was often expired, according to the complaint. “They were so hungry that they resorted to eating the bait fish, including bait fish that he could tell was old,” the lawsuit alleged.

Syafi’i alleged that if men on his boat wanted raincoats, boots, gloves or other protective equipment, the cost would be deducted from their salaries.

“Unfortunately, this is a representative sample” of what many deep-sea fishermen experience, Fryszman said.

In addition to seeking damages for the plaintiffs, the lawsuit seeks to impose on Bumble Bee a list of nine requirements for its supply fleet, such as minimum rest requirements, safety and first-aid training, and the end of using transshipments. The lawsuit seeks to bar Bumble Bee “from benefitting from tuna harvested without such protections in place.”