A reporter acquired “more than 60in worth of Subway tuna sandwiches” from three Los Angeles storefronts, then engaged a specialized fish-testing l

Lab analysis of Subway tuna sandwiches fails to identify tuna DNA

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2021-06-23 10:00:07

A reporter acquired “more than 60in worth of Subway tuna sandwiches” from three Los Angeles storefronts, then engaged a specialized fish-testing lab. Researchers were unable to pinpoint a species.

“There’s two conclusions,” a lab spokesperson told the Times. “One, it’s so heavily processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn’t make an identification.

In February, when Inside Edition ran a similar test based on samples from New York, a Florida-based lab, Applied Food Technologies, did confirm the presence of tuna.

Instead, the plaintiffs alleged, the controversial comestibles are “made from a mixture of various concoctions”, ingredients “blended together … to imitate the appearance of tuna”.

Subway, which has more than 22,000 storefronts across the US, has has been dogged by legal action, including a class-action complaint that said its $5 foot-long sandwiches were in fact only 11 to 11.5in long.

It has fiercely defended the integrity of its tuna supply, calling the recent lawsuit “baseless”. Earlier this year, it touted its “100% real wild-caught tuna” on its website and offered a 15% discount on foot-long tuna subs under the promo code “ITSREAL”.