This week Greenpeace has received cease-and-desist letters from the three canned tuna companies targeted in its animated parody. Bumble Bee, Chicken of the Sea and Starkist’s legal threats follow the green organisation’s new campaign called The Tuna Industry’s Dirty Little Secret, which depicts the companies as unscrupulous and accuses them of using particularly unsustainable and destructive fishing methods.
As per the case letters Greenpeace is misusing the firms’ trademarked images — a bee, a mermaid and a fish — and demand that the group stop broadcasting the “violent, tasteless” video. Greenpeace says that it will continue to use the cartoon characters. Greenpeace Senior Campaigner Casson Trenor said that in their clumsy and litigious attempt to hide their dirty little secret, the industry has illustrated the lengths to which they will go to keep their methods in the shadows.
According to Greenpeace the companies’ fishing methods, particularly their fish-aggregating devices (FADs), generate a tremendous amount of bycatch that includes endangered species such as sharks and turtles. The tuna giants are particulary objecting to the use of their cartoon mascots against them.
Gavin Gibbons of the industry group National Fisheries Institute (NFI), said that the tuna companies have expressed concern that their logos are being used as part of an overtly violent, tasteless video that’s part of a fundraising campaign by Greenpeace. Attorney Ben T Lila of the firm Mandour & Associates wrote to Greenpeace on behalf of Bumble Bee Foods, a company owned by Lion Capital. He said that the campaign in many material aspects is facially defamatory and constitutes trade libel and unfair competition in violation of California Law.
