Two environmental organizations have sued a Pacific Seafood subsidiary, alleging that its Warrenton, Oregon, U.S.A. facility has repeatedly violated wastewater regulations and its Clean Water Act permit.
"For years, Pacific Seafood has reported discharge data showing it is consistently violating pollution limits in its Clean Water Act permit," Northwest Environmental Defense Center Executive Director Jonah Sandford said in a release. "These pollution limits are in place to protect sensitive fish and aquatic life, as well as communities that depend on a healthy Columbia River. The hundreds of violations alleged in the complaint show that the facility is causing real harm to this treasured ecosystem that must be stopped."
The complaint centers on a Warrenton facility run by Pacific Seafood subsidiary Pacific Bio Products, which processes raw fish and shellfish materials to create animal feed ingredients and fertilizers. The Center for Food Safety (CFS) and the Northwest Environmental Defense Center (NEDC) claim the facility “has been in repeat and ongoing violation of its Oregon Department of Environmental Quality permit's pollution discharge, monitoring, and reporting requirements.” Since 2022, the groups allege, Pacific Bio Products has violated its Clean Water Act permit more than 6,000 times.
"Pacific Seafood has unlawfully and irresponsibly offloaded the costs of its operations onto the environment and local community for years," CFS Staff Attorney Kingsly McConnell said in a release. "Polluting industrial aquaculture facilities like this one significantly damage the environment and public health. Through this lawsuit, we are demanding accountability."
A Pacific Seafood spokesperson initially dismissed the allegations when they were first raised in October 2025.
“Here we go again – another lawsuit against the seafood industry by the same cast of characters we and many others have dealt with many times before,” the spokesperson told SeafoodSource. “Folks like this will throw around a lot of false statements to try to make a splash with the media.”
The complaint against Pacific Bio Products claims that Pacific Seafood is a serial violator of the Clean Water Act, pointing to multiple fines and lawsuits in recent years.
“Pacific Seafood, along with its subsidiaries, has a pattern of polluting the waters of the western United States and the Pacific Northwest in particular,” the 20 January complaint states. “Over the past several years, Pacific Seafood and its subsidiaries have been fined for water pollution violations at a number of their other facilities across Washington, Oregon, and California, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars of civil penalties. Pacific Seafood and its subsidiaries have also been subject to numerous other CWA lawsuits, including one in which this Court enjoined violations at a separate Warrenton processing facility and another ongoing case related to pollution of the Columbia River from commercial net-pen aquaculture facilities.”
Pacific Seafood was hit with a USD 222,000 (EUR 188,000) fine in 2024 for Clean Water Act violations and a USD 123,000 (EUR 105,000) fine in April 2022 for similar water quality violations.
