Wild Planet safety review

How we looked at this brand

We reviewed Wild Planet the way we review every brand: company facts first, then the paper trail. Wild Planet Foods, Inc. has its office in McKinleyville, California, and says it has sold wild-caught canned seafood since 2004; its founder, Bill Carvalho, still appears as president in the 2021 announcement of its sale. In August 2021 the Italian company Bolton Group announced that it had acquired Wild Planet. Bolton describes itself as "an Italian family-owned company" and also makes Rio Mare tuna. It said it would keep the Wild Planet name and that Carvalho would continue with the company. We have not established whether he still leads it today.

Wild Planet does not can its own fish. Its FAQ says its tuna, sardines and anchovies are packed in partner canneries in Vietnam, Thailand, Morocco, Ecuador, Cape Verde and Spain, each "third-party audited," and that its sockeye and pink salmon are canned in Alaska. It does not name the canneries. The same company sells a second, lower-priced label, Sustainable Seas, which comes up below because California's records name it.

The Non-GMO Project's product register lists 37 Wild Planet products, including products named like all three we pick (checked October 25, 2026). Non-GMO Project Verified covers GMO avoidance only, not what is in the can, so it does not raise our grade. We found no certification that does. The company says it has chosen not to use the Marine Stewardship Council. That is why Wild Planet is graded acceptable rather than recommended: most of what it tells you about itself is the company's own word, which we quote rather than certify.

What the can-lining statement says, and what it doesn't

Wild Planet's FAQ answers the lining question directly: "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. We only buy cans and lids from manufacturers that do not use BPA in the lining formulation." We re-read it on October 25, 2026. It is a written position about no intentional addition, not a claim that no BPA is present, and it is not a certification.

The company explains why it does not say "BPA-free" in a one-page statement revised in December 2019. In it, Wild Planet says that in 2012 its can makers certified the linings as BPA-free, that it then had the newly formulated cans tested by a third party, and that the tests "discovered trace amounts of BPA." It then used "No BPA used in can lining," and later removed even that from its labels, saying it wanted to avoid "giving our customers a false assurance" after California applied Proposition 65 to BPA. The statement adds that its linings "are still formulated without BPA" and that other seafood cans with a "BPA-free" claim "do not contain less BPA." Those are Wild Planet's words and its description of tests it commissioned; the statement names no laboratory and gives no figures. Wild Planet's own statements and labels do not use the phrase "BPA-free" (the labels say "NON-BPA lining"); if a retailer listing does, check the can.

Mercury: what the company says and what the FDA table shows

Wild Planet's FAQ reports averages from what it calls an annual testing protocol: 0.067 ppm for skipjack, 0.137 for yellowfin and 0.17 for albacore, against the FDA's 1.0 ppm action limit. These are the company's own averages, not a result for each fish. For comparison, the FDA's published monitoring table (content current as of February 2022) lists canned light tuna at a mean of 0.126 ppm and canned albacore at 0.350, with canned salmon at 0.014 and sardines at 0.013. The two sets of numbers come from different samples and methods, so we do not rank one against the other; they point the same way, which is that species matters more than brand. Skipjack and salmon sit lower than albacore. For what the FDA and EPA advise by species, see mercury in fish.

Recalls

We searched the FDA's food enforcement database on October 25, 2026 under the names Wild Planet, Sustainable Seas and Bolton, and for those names inside product descriptions, and found no record. That is a point-in-time statement, not a guarantee. One older matter sits with a different agency: in October 2016 USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service announced a Class I recall by Crider, Inc., a Georgia establishment, of approximately 5,610 pounds of canned Wild Planet Organic Roasted Chicken Breast, for possible foreign material. It is closed, and it is a product we do not list. (CPSC's only "Wild Planet" recall record is a 2006 pool-toy recall by an unrelated toy company.)

The public record next to our picks

California's Attorney General publishes every Proposition 65 60-day notice. On October 25, 2026 we searched that register for Wild Planet, its Sustainable Seas label and its parent. It lists 31 notices filed since May 2020. Twenty-four concern sardines, five concern tuna products and two concern anchovies, and the second anchovy notice amends the first.

Among the 24 sardine notices, seven supplement or amend an earlier one, so they cover 17 separate allegations. The chemicals the 24 name are cadmium (14 notices), lead (9), PFNA or PFOA (2) and mercury (1); two name both cadmium and lead. Fourteen of the 24 were filed by one noticing party, Consumer Advocacy Group, Inc. One sardine notice was withdrawn in March 2026. Five of the 24 show a civil complaint on the register, in two California cases whose outcomes are not recorded there. The tuna notices, filed from December 2022, name lead, PFOS/PFOA and cadmium; three of the five are for prepared items (a tuna chorizo, a tuna pasta salad and a tuna, bean and corn salad) rather than a plain can, and none names Wild Planet's skipjack tuna or its salmon by name (one, from April 2026, names its Sustainable Seas chunk light tuna). The anchovy notices name cadmium.

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, and a notice does not move our grade. Sardines as a category draw these notices from many brands; we did not count the other brands' notices.

Court cases are a separate record, and each one is an allegation, not a finding. A proposed class action filed in federal court in August 2026 alleges that one Wild Planet sardine product, the lightly smoked sardines in olive oil, which is a runner-up on our sardines page and cheat sheet, contained arsenic that its label did not disclose; no court has ruled on it. The complaint itself says it "does not allege a violation of Proposition 65." A second federal case against the company, filed in September 2026, is open and we have not read the complaint, so we do not describe it. An older pair of class actions alleging underfilled 5-ounce tuna cans settled in 2017 for a reported $1.7 million fund, with no admission of liability; that was a fill-weight claim, not a safety one. Each case is set out with its court record in the Litigation watch section of this page.

What we picked, and why

We recommend Wild Planet where it meets every test we set, and we print the record above next to the picks instead of leaving it off.

• Sardines. Wild Planet leads our page on BPA-free canned sardines: it has the clearest written lining position among the sardine brands with an in-stock listing when we checked, and its own pages show the sodium and where the fish are caught. Our pick is the no-salt-added sardines in water.
• Skipjack tuna. The 5-ounce no-salt-added skipjack is the skipjack alternative on our BPA-free canned food cheat sheet (see our product page for it), because skipjack is a lower-mercury tuna.
• Salmon. Wild Planet sockeye is a runner-up on BPA-free canned salmon and tuna, where Safe Catch is our first pick for tuna and salmon.

The wider explainer is BPA and canned food.

Who this brand is for, and who might skip it

Wild Planet suits you if you want a canned-fish brand that states its lining position in writing and shows its sourcing, and you will read the label for sodium: the no-salt-added sardines run 65 mg per 3-ounce serving, while salted cans run 240 to 360 mg.

You might skip it if you are buying for pregnancy or a small child and want a mercury result for each fish; Wild Planet publishes averages, and Safe Catch says it tests every fish. You might also skip it if you want a third-party certification on the can that speaks to what is in it (the Non-GMO Project mark covers GMO avoidance only), or if you would rather avoid a brand with an open court case in the file until it is resolved. That last one is a reasonable personal line, not a safety finding.