BPA-Free Sardines: What Each Brand Says About Its Cans

In the store: what we would buy off the shelf

Everything above links to Amazon. If you would rather buy sardines in a store, two brands with a written lining position are on the shelves of the big chains: Wild Planet and King Oscar. We read each retailer's own product page on 2026-10-25, with a Chicago-area store selected wherever a site asks for one, and the table says only what that page showed. A product page means the retailer lists the item, not that your store has it: availability varies by store and changes daily. These are shelf notes, so none of them carries an affiliate link.

What the two makers say is the wording in the directory above, which we re-read on their own sites on 2026-10-25. Wild Planet: "All of Wild Planet's current products are packed in cans that do not have the intentional addition of BPA in the can lining formulation." King Oscar: "all of our cans are certified BPA-NI, meaning BPA is not intended in the formulation of their materials." Both are "no intentional addition" statements, not "BPA-free". Wild Planet is also the brand with the public record described under "A public record on our top pick" below, and that applies to its cans on a shelf as much as to the ones sold online.

Store	Best choice we could find listed	What the store's own page showed on 2026-10-25	Also listed there
Whole Foods Market	Wild Planet Wild Sardines in Water, No Salt Added, 4.4 oz	Ingredients "Sardines (Sardinops sagax or Sardinops melanostictus), water"; one of its two listings of this can prints 70 mg sodium per 3 oz (85 g) (delivery catalog, ZIP 60712, not a shelf check). Wild Planet's own page prints 65 mg for the same can, so expect 65 to 70 mg.	Wild Planet lightly smoked in extra virgin olive oil, 4.4 oz (260 mg per 3 oz; "aqueous natural smoke flavor" in the ingredients). We did not find King Oscar, Season, Safe Catch or a 365 by Whole Foods Market sardine in its catalog. Fishwife and Patagonia Provisions sardines are listed, but we do not pick them (see the directory).
Costco	Wild Planet Wild Pacific Sardines in Extra Virgin Olive Oil, 4.4 oz, 6-count (item 7554)	costco.com showed "In stock at your selected warehouse" (Lincoln Park). The page prints no ingredient list or sodium, so we did not read this can's label; it tags the can "lightly smoked", and Wild Planet's other olive-oil listings print 250 to 260 mg sodium per 3 oz.	Season Sardine Fillets in 100% Olive Oil, skinless and boneless, 4.375 oz, 6-count (item 180973), also in stock at that warehouse; Season's wording is a supplier assurance (see the directory). We saw no Kirkland Signature sardines in the results. Costco is a membership warehouse.
Kroger	King Oscar Sardines in Pure Spring Water, 3.75 oz	Ingredients "Lightly Smoked Brisling Sardines, Water"; 130 mg sodium per can drained (85 g); pickup "Available" at the Bourbonnais, IL store, flagged "Low Stock".	Kroger pages for Wild Planet olive oil (4.4 oz) and a Season 5-can pack showed "Out of Stock" for pickup at that store. We saw no Kroger or Simple Truth sardines.
Target	King Oscar Sardines in Olive Oil, 3.75 oz	Ingredients "Lightly Smoked Brisling Sardines, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Salt"; 350 mg sodium per 85 g. Our first read of the page showed no stock status for the Chicago Lincoln Park store we selected; a later read the same day said "Out of stock" at that store.	Fishwife and Iberia sardines appeared in Target's results. Target's search stopped returning results after the first query, so we cannot rule out other brands, including a Good & Gather sardine.
Walmart	King Oscar Wild Caught Brisling Sardines in Water, Low Sodium, 3.75 oz, or Wild Planet Wild Sardines in Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Lightly Smoked, 4.4 oz	Both are shown as sold and shipped by Walmart.com, with pickup offered from the Chicago W North Ave Supercenter. King Oscar: "Lightly smoked brisling sardines, water", 130 mg sodium. Wild Planet: organic extra virgin olive oil, sea salt and "aqueous natural smoke" in the ingredients, 260 mg.	Great Value Sardines in Water lists "Sardines, Water, Salt" and 300 mg sodium; neither its page nor our search turned up a Walmart sentence about the lining, so it is "no statement found". Many other listings are third-party sellers.
Trader Joe's	None	Lightly Smoked Sardines in Olive Oil, 4.25 oz: ingredients "Sardine, olive oil, salt, natural flavor", 220 mg sodium per can drained (85 g). Its product FAQ lists "MOST Canned Fish & Chicken" among packages with no intentionally added BPA in the lining and does not say whether sardines are in the "most".	No statement found for this product: check the can, or ask a crew member.

How to choose among them. Buy Wild Planet where it is stocked (Whole Foods, Walmart, and Costco if you check the panel, since its page showed none), for the same reasons it is our top pick online. At Kroger the Wild Planet page we read was out of stock for pickup, and we could not confirm Wild Planet at Target, so King Oscar is the brand we found available there; at Target it too was out of stock at the store we selected. Remember what "no intentional addition" means: Wild Planet says its own commissioned tests found trace amounts of BPA in can linings (see "What does not tell you a can is BPA-free" above), so neither brand is a promise of zero BPA. Sodium is the real trade-off on the shelf, and the pages above show how large it is: Wild Planet's no-salt-added water pack prints 65 to 70 mg per 3 oz against 260 mg for its olive-oil can, and King Oscar's low-sodium water pack prints 130 mg against 350 mg for its olive-oil can. Those are the retailers' printed figures, so compare the panel on the can in your hand.

What to look for on the can. We have not inspected cans in stores, and neither maker's lining sentence is something you can rely on seeing printed on a label, so use the shelf for what a label does show:

• The brand and the exact product name. The positions above are the makers' own statements about their brand, from their sites. A different brand's can does not inherit them.
• The ingredient line. The cans above list sardines (or brisling sardines), water or olive oil, and salt; the lightly smoked olive-oil cans add "aqueous natural smoke". Some cans sold as sardines are sprats or herring, and the line says which.
• "No salt added", or the sodium figure. It is printed per serving, and serving sizes differ between brands (85 g or 3 oz on the cans above, a drained can on others).
• Not "BPA-free" on a shelf tag or listing. A store's wording is not the maker's wording; see "What does not tell you a can is BPA-free" above.

Store brands and unknowns. For Great Value and Trader Joe's the answer is "no statement found". We found no current lining statement from Walmart for Great Value, and Trader Joe's wording covers "most" canned fish without naming it. We did not find a Kirkland Signature, 365 by Whole Foods Market, Simple Truth or Good & Gather sardine in the catalogs we read, so we have nothing to say about them.

How we read the brands

Every entry in the directory above and every row in the table below is the brand's own published wording, read on 2026-10-23, with the page it came from in the sources list. Where a brand published nothing we could find, the table says so rather than guessing. We did not email anyone. Two bands of claim are easy to confuse, so we keep them apart:

• "BPA-free": the brand writes that its cans contain no BPA.
• "No intentional addition" / "BPA-NI": BPA is not part of the lining recipe. This is what most brands that speak at all say, and it is a narrower claim.
• Supplier assurance: the brand writes that its suppliers provide cans without BPA in the lining (Season). It speaks to the supply chain, not a recipe or a test, so we count it among the written positions and keep its exact wording.

Anchovies, mackerel and herring, where we could source them

Only brands with something published are listed; the rest had nothing we could verify.

Fish	Brand and product	What it says about the can lining	Sodium and origin, as printed
Anchovies	Wild Planet white anchovies in olive oil	No intentional addition, all current products	270 mg per 3 oz drained; Atlantic, fisheries in Morocco
Anchovies	Cento	"none of our cans contain BPA as an ingredient in the protective lining"	Label not read
Anchovies	King Oscar anchovies in olive oil	"BPA-NI", all cans	870 mg per 5 fillets (15 g); one 2022 lot recalled for histamine, Class II, terminated
Anchovies	Crown Prince flat anchovies	"Most" products, no product named	860 mg per 6 pieces (15 g); Morocco
Mackerel	Wild Planet Pacific mackerel	No intentional addition	350 mg per 5 oz can; North Pacific, Japan
Mackerel	Safe Catch mackerel	Easy-open aluminum containers "made without BPA or the intentional addition of BPA"	Label not read; not on the maker's online shop on 2026-10-26
Mackerel	King Oscar skinless and boneless mackerel in olive oil	"BPA-NI"	350 mg per can drained (80 g)
Herring (kippers)	Crown Prince kipper snacks	"Most" products, no product named	285 mg per can; Canada

Mercury differs by species more than by brand. In the FDA's table, anchovies average 0.016 ppm, Atlantic mackerel 0.05, Pacific chub mackerel 0.088, herring 0.078 and king mackerel 0.73, and the FDA puts king mackerel on its "Choices to Avoid" list. The mackerel figures other than king mackerel come from a 1978 federal report, the oldest data in the FDA table. For tuna and salmon cans see our page on BPA-free canned salmon and tuna; we do not repeat it here.

What we picked, and what we could not

We chose Wild Planet first because it has the clearest written position among the brands with an in-stock listing when we checked, and its own page shows the sodium and where the fish are caught. Every in-stock Wild Planet and Season sardine listing we found on 2026-10-25 was sold by a third-party seller, and the no-salt-added water pack we first picked (sold by Amazon.com) showed "Currently unavailable", so we picked from the in-stock listings. Safe Catch's statement is more specific about the lining, but we could not resolve a sardine listing for it (searches on 2026-10-25 and 2026-10-26 returned only tuna, salmon and trout, and its own online shop listed no sardines on 2026-10-26), so we do not link one. King Oscar is the most candid about what "BPA-NI" means; none of its sardine listings that Amazon's API returned on 2026-10-25 was in stock, most showing an "available date" instead and the rest "out of stock". If either changes, this page changes with it.

A public record on our top pick

California's Attorney General publishes every Proposition 65 60-day notice. On 2026-10-23 we searched that register for Wild Planet and its Sustainable Seas label. It lists 24 notices naming Wild Planet or Sustainable Seas sardines, filed between May 2020 and October 2025; seven of them supplement or amend an earlier notice, so they cover 17 separate allegations. The chemicals the 24 allege are cadmium (14 notices), lead (9), the perfluorinated chemicals PFNA or PFOA (2) and mercury (1); two notices name both cadmium and lead.

A 60-day notice alleges that a product was sold in California without the Proposition 65 warning label. It is not a finding that the fish was unsafe. Five of the 24 show a civil complaint filed on the register; we did not follow their outcomes. Sardines as a category draw these notices: a search of the same register for "sardine" returns about 200 notices naming many brands, and we did not count them by brand. We kept Wild Planet as the pick for what it publishes about its cans, and print this record beside the pick.

Safe Catch is not a pick here, but we hold it to the same standard. On 2026-10-26 we read the register for notices naming Safe Catch, Inc. over its own products. Four concern sardines, filed between June 2021 and December 2025: mercury (one notice), lead (two) and PFOS and PFOA (one; it also names Safe Catch tuna). One of the lead notices has a civil complaint on the register against Safe Catch, Inc. in Los Angeles County Superior Court; we did not read the court docket. The other lead notice's complaint names only the retailer, Smart & Final. The same caution applies: each notice alleges a missing warning label, not that the fish was unsafe.

For more on how to read the label, the shared explainer is BPA in canned food and the cheat sheet is BPA-free canned food.