The Target Brand Tuna You Should Always Avoid Buying

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Tuna is one of the most versatile, nourishing proteins in many foodies' go-to recipe rotations. For a quick fix, some home cooks prefer the texture and flavor of whole frozen tuna fillets over the canned stuff — and to the former, we say "Don't get it from Target." In Tasting Table's roundup of 6 Target frozen seafood items to buy and 3 to skip, the Good & Gather Wild Caught Yellowfin Tuna clocked in as a major skip.

Here at Tasting Table, we're generally pretty solid proponents of Target's generic Good & Gather brand, which delivers impressive quality for the price point on products from frozen meals to jarred salsas. In a seemingly similar fashion, Target's 16-ounce bag of frozen wild-caught yellow tuna fillets retails for around $12.99 ($0.81 per ounce), depending on location, which seems like a decent value. The only listed ingredient on the product packaging is "yellowfin tuna (thunnus albcares)," ostensibly indicating a lack of added preservative agents — which would be a good thing, if the fillets actually arrived in better, fresher condition.

As we noted in our review, the bag promises four servings, but a common customer complaint is that they only received three. Not only is this a drag in terms of economic value, but it also seems less-than-trustworthy for other, perhaps more serious quality control issues. Indeed, multiple product reviews report tough, stringy texture and discoloration in the fillets, which could be indicative of blood vessels or even harmful bacteria and parasites (yikes).

Nearly all of the negative customer reviews on the Target website dog both the product's quality and freshness — or, more accurately, the total lack thereof. "I think this batch had sat out on the deck of the fishing boat for a week before they froze it. About to head to Target and return the bag. Completely inedible," writes one. Another echoes, "It had spots of discoloration, and appeared to be bad, even when kept in the freezer and cooked within a week of purchase."

It's also worth noting that, earlier this month, Target was hit with a multi-million-dollar class-action lawsuit for claiming that its Good & Gather brand canned chunk light tuna is "sustainably caught." Despite including the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) checkmark logo, indicating a commitment to industry best practices, Target gets the meat for its private label canned tuna from The Tuna Store LLC — an underling of global fishing conglomerate The Bolton Group, which relies on longline fishing. This practice (which is notoriously harmful to endangered species) is "used to catch Target's albacore tuna products," per a recent report by Seafood Source, while purse-seine fishing is used to catch the non-albacore products. This alleged misrepresentation of sourcing doesn't exactly cast an encouraging light on recurring quality issues like discoloration and weird textures. For tasty tuna, foodies are better off sticking to Scout or Ortiz, our all-time favorite canned tuna brands here at Tasting Table.