MILFORD, CT – The eyebrow-raising results of a laboratory test of Subway’s tuna fish reveals that the popular sandwich chain’s tuna sandwiches and wraps actually contain no tuna DNA at all, according to reports.
Following a lawsuit earlier this year that alleged that Subway’s tuna was made from “a mixture of various concoctions” – none of which were actually fish – the New York Times conducted its own research by obtaining tuna sandwiches from three separate Subway restaurants in Los Angeles, which where all then frozen and sent to a laboratory for testing.
The results were indeed surprising, and seemed to align with the accusations in the lawsuit, as the lab noted “no amplifiable tuna DNA was present in the sample and so we obtained no amplification products from the DNA. Therefore, we cannot identify the species.”
The laboratory conducted a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, which is used to detect genetic material from a specific organism; the results did not match with a number of different tuna species, reports say.
The lawsuit that inspired the Times to conduct the testing was originally filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California in January, with the case alleging that Subway had engaged in fraud by tricking the plaintiff into “buying food items that wholly lacked the ingredients they reasonably thought they were purchasing.” Subway countered that the allegations were not true, and that the chain “delivers 100% cooked tuna to its restaurants.”
But how could Subway be selling tuna in name only? The laboratory noted that either the alleged tuna that the restaurant chain was selling is “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.”
The Times consulted experts, who pointed out that the lab results may not be 100 percent accurate since the protein of tuna breaks down when cooked, which could make it difficult to identify.
Subway has not yet responded as of press time to media inquiries regarding their tuna.
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