A mercury test that the tuna industry turned down.

Safe Catch is a canned-seafood brand from Sausalito, California, founded by Sean Wittenberg and his childhood friend Bryan Boches, the company says. It began as a testing business rather than a food brand. The company says Wittenberg assembled a team of researchers and scientists to build a faster way of measuring mercury in fish. It first presented the technology to public-health agencies and then offered it to established seafood brands; neither effort went anywhere, the company says.

So the founders made their own tuna. The North Bay Bohemian reported in June 2017 that the company had decided in 2013 to turn itself from a testing company into a product company; later coverage, by New Hope Network in 2024 and Food Republic in 2025, dates the brand’s launch to 2014. The first products were Safe Catch Elite and Safe Catch Albacore, the company says. In November 2016 Wittenberg and Boches pitched the business on ABC’s Shark Tank, in its eighth season, and left without a deal, Looper reported.

Every fish tested, and every claim reviewed.

Testing is the brand’s message. Safe Catch says it tests every tuna and salmon it buys against its own mercury limit; its website gives that limit as 0.1 parts per million and runs a counter of fish tested to date. The company says its testing technology received AOAC International certification in 2020, and FoodNavigator reported in April 2024 that the method analyses a tissue sample about the size of a grain of rice.

Those claims were themselves reviewed. In July 2021 the National Advertising Division of BBB National Programs, acting on a challenge from the National Fisheries Institute, the trade group that runs the Tuna Council, found that Safe Catch had a reasonable basis for several claims, including that it tests every fish for mercury and that its wild tuna is “100% Sustainably Caught,” and said the name “Safe Catch” could stay. It recommended that others be modified or discontinued, among them a “Why test every tuna?” graphic it found disparaging to other brands, a “better tasting” claim and claims of endorsement by the American Pregnancy Association. Safe Catch said it would comply with the recommendations while disagreeing with one of them, BBB National Programs reported.

The packaging carries the message too. The 2017 Bohemian article described cans and pouches bearing the line “Eat Pure. Live Pure.,” and the company told the paper that turning the can upside down let it put a label on the top and “say more stuff.” The website now uses lines such as “Food Purity Matters.”

Around the testing sits a set of outside affiliations, most of them listed by the company itself. Safe Catch says it joined the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch partner program, became Plastic Neutral through rePurpose Global and is Whole30 Approved; its website also shows Marine Stewardship Council certification. Food Republic dates the Plastic Neutral certification to 2021 and the Marine Stewardship Council partnership to 2022. Wittenberg was chief executive when FoodNavigator interviewed him in April 2024; Boches is presented by the company as a co-founder.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all American names in tinned seafood: StarKist, Bumble Bee, Chicken of the Sea, Safe Catch, American Tuna, Crown Prince and Season. Tinned-fish brands sit at many different points in the trade, from long-established household names on supermarket shelves to smaller companies built around a single fishery or a single product.

Several of the best-known American names now belong to groups based outside the United States. English Wikipedia records that South Korea’s Dongwon Industries bought StarKist from Del Monte Foods in 2008, that Taiwan’s FCF acquired Bumble Bee in 2020, and that Thailand’s Thai Union became the sole owner of Chicken of the Sea in 2000; Moroccan reports in 2021 recorded the purchase of Season by the Casablanca group Mutandis. A tinned-fish brand’s identity is therefore often carried less by a single factory than by a label, a name and a mascot, because the company behind the name may have changed hands and its fish may be caught and packed far from where the brand began.

That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its fish is caught and canned. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From tuna to trout, and a Canadian purchase.

The company’s accounts of where its fish is processed differ by date. In 2017 the North Bay Bohemian reported that Safe Catch’s fish was held in cold storage and shipped to Thailand, where it was cooked and canned on lines reserved for Safe Catch products; in 2026 the company’s website describes its products as “Processed in the USA,” without naming a plant.

The range has widened beyond tuna to wild salmon, mackerel, sardines and smoked trout, Food Republic reported in January 2025, with the mackerel and sardines added in 2023 and the trout in 2024. In 2022 Wittenberg launched Pure Cravings, a mercury-tested cat food, Looper and Food Republic reported. In early April 2024 Safe Catch completed its purchase of Scout, a Canadian tinned-seafood brand known for mussels and lobster, New Hope Network reported; terms were not disclosed, both companies are privately held, and the chief operating officer, Kevin McCay, said retailers’ fees, promotions and discounts made it hard for small brands to turn a profit. FoodNavigator reported that Safe Catch would apply its testing technology to Scout’s products.

For a design guide, Safe Catch shows how a brand can build its whole identity around a single test, and how that promise draws scrutiny of its claims. Compare Wild Planet, another California tuna brand built on a sourcing story, and American Tuna. For this guide we use deep navy, sea teal and can silver with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Safe Catch’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.