What’s in Subway’s tuna sandwiches? This week, the mystery-meat mystery deepened after an independent laboratory failed to find any tuna DNA in multiple samples that were provided by the New York Times.
Earlier this year, a class action lawsuit in California accused Subway of selling fake tuna sandwiches that do not actually contain sustainably-caught skipjack and yellowfin tuna, as advertised.
Subway fought back, insisting there was “no truth” to the lawsuit: “Subway delivers 100 percent cooked tuna to its restaurants, which is mixed with mayonnaise and used in freshly made sandwiches,” Subway said.
So, to find out if the lawsuit has any merit, a New York Times reporter bought 5 foot-long Subway tuna sandwiches from 3 locations in Los Angeles and sent them to a lab that specializes in testing fish.
This week, the Times reported that the laboratory found “no amplifiable tuna DNA. … Therefore, we cannot identify the species.”
So, what’s going on?
Two possibilities, the lab said: “One, it’s so heavily processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn’t make an identification. Or we got some and there’s just nothing there that’s tuna.”
So it’s heavily-processed tuna, or not tuna, apparently.
And yes, there are some caveats to consider. After the tuna is cooked at least once, identifying its DNA might be impossible. We just don’t know yet.
The Subway tuna class action lawsuit is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California — Case No. 4:21-cv-00498-DMR.
Source: The Big Tuna Sandwich Mystery