12 Of The Worst Canned Tuna Recalls Of All Time

There are some foods out there that virtually everyone has in their kitchen, and canned tuna is one of them. As one of the most accessible and affordable proteins there is, it's no surprise that the canned tuna market is absolutely massive: According to Precedence Research, over 3 billion dollars are spent every year on this humble fish, and if market projections are correct, people's tastes for it are only going to get bigger as time goes on. With so many cans of tuna sold yearly, though, it's probably no massive shock that things go wrong every now and again. When they do, things to look for when buying canned tuna suddenly become a bit more complicated than they appear, and some of the mistakes made by food manufacturers have resulted in horrific tuna recalls.

Because there's so much talk around the mercury levels in canned tuna, it's easy to assume that presence of the heavy metal is behind most of the worst recalls out there. However, that's not the case. Many of the most disastrous canned tuna recalls have actually occurred because of improper production processes, which have left products at risk of harboring botulism toxins that could be incredibly harmful to anyone consuming them. Elsewhere, tuna recalls have been prompted by mislabelling, with some frankly bizarre mistakes that have led to cans of different products entirely being sold as the fish (cat food, anyone?). Check out some of the worst tuna recalls the world has ever seen, right here.

You'd think that food manufacturers would have figured out how not to make their products actively harmful by 2025. Alas, that clearly isn't quite the case yet, if a canned tuna recall that affected Costco, Trader Joe's, and other stores is anything to go by. In February 2025, Tri-Union Seafoods had to put out a recall of a massive amount of its canned tuna products, which were sent and sold all over the country. The company was forced into the recall after it learned that its can supplier had been giving them defective products, which meant that the "easy pull" lid may have been compromised. This could have led to the development of clostridium botulinum, a bacteria that produces the harmful and potentially fatal botulism toxin.

Although Tri-Union Seafoods noted that the problem may have only affected limited products, it still had to recall dozens of different lots of its canned tuna. As well as Costco and Trader Joe's, stores like H-E-B, Publix, Kroger, Safeway, and Walmart were affected. 27 states in total were impacted, and as the products affected had the best if used by dates extending into 2027 and 2028, there's a chance that there may be recently-bought cans of tuna in people's pantries that could be subject to the recall as of this publication

Call us old-fashioned, but we feel like canned tuna is meant to be pretty well-sealed, right? Sadly, that doesn't always happen. In 2013 we saw another example of this, when Bumble Bee Foods, one of the biggest tuna producers out there, issued a recall on a load of cases of its 5 oz. chunk tuna. The recall was released after it came to light that the cans' seals were faulty, which led to the potential for looseness and the risk of contamination.

Unfortunately, this was one of those recalls that started pretty big, and only became bigger. At first, Bumble Bee Foods was faced with tracking down multiple lots of multiple products that were distributed over roughly six weeks — which was in itself a pretty massive job. Shortly after this, though, it was forced to expand its recall to include even more cans that were affected by the manufacturing issue. It wasn't just Bumble Bee that was affected by this canning problem, either: Chicken Of The Sea was also forced to recall some of its products due to using the faulty packaging.

Food recalls can often feel like a pretty modern thing, but they've been going on for more than half a century, with food companies and health bodies being forced to track down items due to their potential risk to the public. An early example of a food recall occurred in 1970, when the Food and Drug Administration had to issue one for nearly a million cans of tuna sold across the country. Multiple brands were found to be selling tuna that had more mercury than the FDA had stated was safe, and as a result, their products had to be removed from store shelves (although the FDA stopped short of instructing people to return the items to their point of purchase).

This recall exists as a kind of time capsule for the way that food used to be sold, and perhaps points to why accurate sales data nowadays is so important. FDA officials said at the time that it was essentially impossible to figure out how many potentially contaminated tuna cans had been sold, whereas nowadays every item stocked and sold in a supermarket is carefully itemized and tracked. Although the mercury levels in the tuna were too high, the FDA also noted that its limit was purely a guideline, and eating the fish wouldn't lead to any immediate harm.

One of the main appeals of eating canned food is that it's usually ready to go instantly, and there's no need to cook it beforehand — which is both thanks to canned tuna already being cooked and to the cans being free of bacteria. Well, most of the time, anyway. In 2016, Bumble Bee Foods discovered that some of its products hadn't undergone the sterilization processes required by the company to sell its food with confidence, and as a result it had to recall well over 31,000 cases of its chunk light tuna, which had been shipped around the country.

So, what were those sterilization processes that this tuna hadn't gone through? Well, it turned out that it involved the tuna itself. In its recall notice, Bumble Bee Foods stated that the tuna had been under-processed, which we assume means that it wasn't cooked enough. Raw and undercooked tuna can contain bacteria and parasites that can be harmful to human health, even when it's canned, and so it's a good thing that the company recalled it.

We generally think of canned products as being sealed tight and safe to use for years to come. Unfortunately, when it comes to canned tuna, that tightness can be a little harder to achieve. This was seen yet again in 2010, when Tri-Union Seafoods had to recall some of its 12-ounce cans of Chicken of the Sea brand tuna, after a production error led to the cans not having tight enough seals.

The problem with tuna cans is that they're frequently made with a ring pull design, but this increases the likelihood of them exhibiting seal issues, as there's more likelihood for looseness of gaps when compared to a fully-sealed version. As a result, there's more chance of foreign bodies and contaminants making their way into the can and causing bacteria to grow and fester. Tri-Union Seafoods promised to re-evaluate its processes after the issue was discovered, but considering that it's seen multiple recalls prompted by the same problem since, you have to question how much it's addressed its issues. Thankfully for Tri-Union Seafoods, nobody had become ill from eating its products, but things could have been much worse.

Most canned tuna products are fairly simple and contain just cooked tuna, salt, and potentially some vegetable or olive oil. Every now and again, though, they may not be 100% tuna — and when they aren't, manufacturers really need to put those additional ingredients on their labels. This didn't quite happen in 2012, when Chicken of the Sea issued lots of its 7-ounce cans that contained soy, but which didn't flag the ingredient on their branding or ingredients list. As a consequence, these tuna cans, which were shipped to Costco locations around the continental U.S. and in Hawaii, could have produced unknowing allergic responses in individuals who ate them.

This was no laughing matter. Soy allergies can be as dangerous as other ones, with symptoms like hives, diarrhea, vomiting, and anaphylaxis all possible after ingesting it. The missing ingredient was only discovered when a canning facility ran an internal check, which subsequently prompted the recall. What's kind of amazing is that it seemed to escape detection for around a month, with cans with best by dates running across roughly four weeks being sent out with the missing info before it was discovered.

Canned tuna is pretty good (and supremely versatile) when it comes in its classic form, but sometimes people want a little bit more taste. As such, the rise of swanky, flavored canned tuna varieties has been pretty unstoppable, particularly in the United Kingdom, where customers are demanding a little more bang for their buck (well, their pound). However, with more ingredients comes a greater margin for error, and in late 2024 a flavored tuna product had to be recalled from UK Aldi stores because it contained an undeclared allergen: Wheat. Aldi's soy & ginger infused canned tuna was improperly labelled and failed to flag that ingredient's presence, which could have been a big issue for anyone with a gluten allergy or intolerance.

Aldi subsequently had to recall every single one of these tuna cans from its stores, regardless of its best before date or batch code. Wheat had been missed from all of its labels, it seems. Customers were told that they could return the product to their local Aldi store for a full refund, with the company apologizing for its error. It was a rare misstep from the German retailer, which has recently seen some pretty big changes happening in 2025.

We usually associate histamines with hayfever, with the chemicals our bodies release to fight off invaders in pretty high stock during springtime. However, you might be surprised to learn that sometimes they get into our food — and particularly in tuna — in seriously high quantities. In 2004, tuna produced by Chicken of the Sea in American Samoa had to be recalled due to wildly high levels of histamines in the meat. The recall, issued by the U.S. Department of Defence, was issued as a result of worries that consuming the histamine-laden tuna could prompt allergic reactions, with scombroid poisoning being an especially dangerous consequence.

Histamines can develop in canned tuna due to the fish decomposing in the can, but high histamine levels can also be a sign that the product itself has been treated poorly. Poor hygiene practices and handling food with histamine-contaminated equipment can lead to a buildup of the chemical in canned items. Canned food is less likely to develop histamines quickly if it's packed in oil, but they can still build up over time.

Of all the food recalls we've covered in our time, this has to be one of the most disgusting. Back in 1992, federal agents had to quickly recall nearly 40,000 cans of tuna from a warehouse in New Jersey, which had been produced way back in 1985 in Canada. After the Canadian cannery was closed because of its unsanitary nature, the cans then made their way to the United States, where they were eventually acquired by Ocean King Foods. These cans of tuna were subsequently labeled, stored, and deemed ready for consumption by humans. The problem? The tuna inside them was such poor quality that it was only acceptable as cat food — and this cat food was being lined up to be bought and put into tuna fish sandwiches for our lunch.

Pretty disgusting, right? To make matters worse, not only was the tuna meant for cats, but it had also undergone a serious decomposition process between being produced and being labeled. As well as seizing these rogue cans from the New Jersey warehouse, agents also released information about their product codes to the public. As for who put those labels on the cans in the first place, that much was unclear.

You might not have had "political scandals involving tuna" in mind as something that you were gonna learn about today — but gather round, kids, and let us tell you a story about tunagate. This dishonourable event in Canadian history bubbled over in 1985, but it all started a few years prior to that. Back in 1983, Star-Kist Canada, a major cannery based in New Brunswick, was facing repeated rejections of its products by federal government food inspectors due to its low quality. The inspectors discovered that the tuna in the cans was rancid and rotten, and while Sun-Kist disputed their claims, it led to a major backlog of product in its warehouses.

Then, in 1984, Canada's fisheries minister John Fraser toured the plant and tried some of the tuna said to have been rejected. After a combination of political pressure placed on Fraser by Sun-Kist, and Fraser's own investigations, he approved the release of the tuna to the market. An almighty scandal erupted, and following an interview where he said that he wasn't aware that the tuna was contaminated, Fraser ended up resigning. The tuna had to be recalled, Sun-Kist laid off hundreds of workers and closed its cannery, and new anti-interference legislation was created for federal food inspectors.

While the majority of food recalls occur out of excessive caution, every now and again they happen as a result of tragic circumstances. Back in 1963 this was the case, when almost 6,000 cans of tuna had to be recalled after the deaths of two women in Grosse Ile, Michigan, with a third becoming seriously ill. Margaret McCarthy and Colette Brown died within days of each other, shortly after both had eaten a tuna fish snack with a friend that had been made with canned tuna caught in Japan and shipped to the Detroit area. All of the signs pointed to the fact that both women had succumbed to botulism poisoning.

Although it was unclear whether the tuna itself was responsible, it looked to be pretty likely — and as a consequence, a hunt for the cans ensued. A dozen cans from the same shipment that had supplied the women with their tuna were all tested and came back negative, and health officials claimed that there were no issues with the modern packing facility where the fish was handled. It was later established, though, that botulism had indeed entered the can of fish the women had consumed through a defective seam. This event would predate a later botulism outbreak in 1963, with multiple people dying as a result of eating other types of canned fish.

It's no surprise that some canned tuna recalls have been absolutely huge — this product is pretty popular, after all, and there's a can on virtually every supermarket shelf around the world. However, one recall in 1982 really changed the game when it came to how big these events could actually get. That year, approximately 40 million cans of canned tuna produced by Bumble Bee Foods were recalled by the FDA, after a customer found that their can of tuna had a hole in it and the tuna inside was spoiled. The FDA subsequently investigated the cannery that the tuna was packed at, and found that another can had a hole in it too, which had been hidden by the label.

Although the tuna inside the cans wasn't actively harmful, there were fears that there would be a widespread compromising of other cans of the fish, and a recall was issued. Incredibly, though, it took quite a while for folks to come to that conclusion. Despite the holes in the first two cans that had been found, the FDA didn't issue a recall until other customers complained about finding perforations in their cans of tuna months later. It was only then that the FDA realized how widespread this issue was and saw fit to recall tens of millions of cans from retailers across the country.