BLOOM and foodwatch take Carrefour to court

17 March 2025

On Monday 17 March, after two years of fruitless dialogue in the context of two formal notices served on Carrefour by BLOOM, one in November 2023, and the other in April 2024 with foodwatch: the NGOs are taking the multinational to the Paris court for failure to fulfil its duty of vigilance in its tuna industry. The environmental and human impacts of the tropical tuna industry, the one which produces the canned tuna that Europeans and the French relish, are numerous and well-documented. Faced with these challenges, the company has responded with cynicism, deploying seven avoidance strategies, which BLOOM reveals today in its report “Drowning the catch“, enabling it to present itself as a responsible company when its sourcing is far from it. At a time when the European Union is undermining the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, the two NGOs reaffirm the urgent necessity of compelling multinationals to assess and mitigate the risks and impacts of their production chains. 

For BLOOM and foodwatch, “despite its legal obligation of vigilance, Carrefour does not prohibit destructive fishing methods in its tuna supplies, has not adopted a maximum mercury limit sufficient to protect consumer health, and is unable to demonstrate that the canned food it sells is free from human rights abuses. These are serious failings. Carrefour must act, and we are calling on the courts to force it to do so.” 

Taking Carrefour to court: an inevitable and necessary outcome 

The conclusions BLOOM’s report are clear: there is a glaring gap between Carrefour’s lofty rhetoric and the reality of its commitments on tuna. The company’s exemplary approach conceals supply policies that are incapable of preventing the health, human and environmental risks and impacts of this industry. Yet the retailer is subject to the French law of 2017 on the duty of vigilance and has an obligation to take measures to ensure that its activities do not undermine human rights, the environment and people’s health. Our investigation showed that this was not the case for its tuna business, and despite two formal notices being sent to the company to radically change its practices, the leading supermarket chain is showing shameless cynicism to disguise its lack of will and inaction. With dialogue now at a standstill, BLOOM and foodwatch are taking Carrefour to court to hold it accountable for its actions. The court could order the company to take the measures deemed necessary to protect consumer health, human rights and the environment. For the two NGOs, this action represents a hope that the company, along with its competitors, will take responsibility and commit to a genuine transformation of the sector. 

Canned food that harms human health and the environment 

Tuna, a familiar and seemingly innocuous product, conceals considerable risks and impacts. The widespread contamination of tuna with mercury, revealed by BLOOM and foodwatch in 2024, puts the health of consumers, particularly women and children, at risk.  

For BLOOM and foodwatch, “At a time when more than 50,000 people are calling on European retailers to apply the most protective threshold available to their tuna products, i.e. 0.3 mg of mercury per kilo, and despite all the alerts we have sent them, Carrefour has still not budged“. 

Tuna fishing is one of the most dangerous industries in the world: 42% of human rights violations at sea take place on board tuna vessels (1). Forced labour, torture, debt bondage, malnutrition… these abuses are widespread and have been documented by NGOs working in the field (2). The tuna industry is also disastrous for the ocean: the tuna sold in Europe largely comes from fisheries using FADs (Fish Aggregating Devices). These devices are directly linked to the over-exploitation of tuna populations in the Indian Ocean, responsible for the sacrifice of millions of juvenile tuna, non-targeted marine animals such as sharks and turtles, and considerable plastic and electronic pollution (3). 

Carrefour: a global giant with the duty and power to act 

Retailers have the power to transform the industry: they operate in a concentrated market and sell 97% of the canned tuna purchased in France (4). For its part, Carrefour, as the world’s 7th largest retailer (5), established in more than 40 countries, with nearly 15,000 shops and a turnover of 92 billion euros in 2023, has considerable weight to bring about a dynamic in this direction. After all, it’s all a question of will: the brand has proved on several occasions that it is capable of imposing demanding rules on its suppliers. In 2024 alone, Carrefour delisted products from the PepsiCo group on the grounds of “unacceptable price rises”, (6) and pressed 550 suppliers to display the Nutri-Score, warning that noncompliance would be disclosed to customers. (7)

 

READ BLOOM’S REPORT “DROWNING THE CATCH”

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(1) Study of 6853 international offences at sea between 2000 and 2020. See Belhabid et al (2022), Fish crimes in the global oceans, Science advances, available here.

(2) See BLOOM (2023), Canned Brutality, for a comprehensive review of these alerts.

(3) See BLOOM, (2023), Tuna War Games.

(4) FranceAgriMer, 2021, Consommation des produits de la pêche et d’aquaculture 2021, available here.

(5) National Retail Federation, Top 50 Global Retailers 2024, available here.

(6) France Bleu, 2024, Pepsi, Lipton, Lay’s, Doritos: Carrefour announces the return of products from the giant PepsiCo to its shelves, available here.

(7) Alexandre Bompard (Linkedin), 2024, available here.