Subway Tuna Sandwiches: People don’t usually question if the bread is bread when eating sandwiches, and presumably, customers don’t have to examine what the ingredients are made of either–people know what they enjoy and buy what they know.
However, recent court action and related media inquiry raise doubts about whether the tuna in Subway’s popular subs is indeed tuna.
According to The Guardian, the saga began in January 2021, when two Californian Subway customers, Karen Dhanowa and Nilima Amin, filed a lawsuit alleging that Subway’s tuna sandwiches were “manufactured from anything but tuna.
It A Subway Tuna Sandwiches Made Of Bread
Instead, the plaintiffs claimed that the mixture was made up of several concoctions to give it a tuna-like appearance and feel. They believed they were “tricked” into paying more for tuna, which was healthier than other animal products, according to a storey in The Cut.
A reporter from the New York Times conducted an independent investigation by purchasing tuna sandwiches from three Subway locations in Los Angeles. The tuna was removed, frozen, and delivered to a commercial food testing lab, where the samples were subjected to a PCR test to discover genetic material in the hopes of identifying five different species of tuna.
The lab declared “no amplifiable tuna DNA was present in the sample and hence we acquired no amplification products from the DNA,” and “therefore, we cannot identify the species,” according to the New York Times.
The tuna was either “that extensively processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn’t make an identification,” or “there’s absolutely nothing there that’s tuna,” according to the storey.
Subway’s reaction to The New York Times test is that tuna DNA isn’t usually traceable after it’s been cooked and that the findings in no way imply that their tuna isn’t authentic.
The New York Times test was independently verified by USA Today, who agreed with Subway’s claim that “tuna DNA becomes denatured after it is cooked, making it difficult to determine a fish’s traits.” The USA Today study found that the New York Times piece lacked context in general.
“The analysis did not demonstrate that there is no tuna in Subway’s tuna,” Lorri Christou, vice president of public relations, communications, and public affairs at Subway, told USA Today, “but the testing could not confirm tuna, which is what one would anticipate from a DNA test of denatured proteins.”
Subway defended its tuna sub on a website called Subwaytunafacts.com, claiming that “Subway uses wild-caught skipjack tuna regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)” and that “our tuna is and has always been high-quality premium, and 100 percent real.”
Inside Edition also conducted identical tests using Subway tuna samples from New York, and Applied Food Technologies, a Florida-based lab, confirmed the presence of tuna.
The plaintiffs changed their claims on June 7, deleting the “no tuna” assertion but maintaining that Subway’s labelling was “malicious” and that its tuna marketing and promotion is deceptive and misleading. The argument now revolves around whether or not the tuna is “100% sustainably harvested skipjack and yellowfin tuna.”
According to Reuters, Subway asked the court to dismiss the action by the end of July 2021, calling the additional accusations “frivolous” and detrimental to the thousands of franchisees that serve tuna subs. The plaintiffs had “doubled down on their destructive behaviour with fresh, equally unsupportable accusations,” Subway stated in a July court filing.
It isn’t the first time that Subway components have been forensically examined in court in order to obtain financial gain. Irish courts determined in October 2020 that Subway could not claim that their sandwiches were made of bread in Ireland. A Subway franchisee had brought the matter to court, claiming that it should be required to pay VAT because its product (bread) was a food staple with a 0% VAT rate. However, the courts determined that Subway’s ‘bread’ included too much sugar to be regarded as bread.
According to Irish legislation, the sugar level in bread “must not exceed 2% of the weight of flour incorporated in the dough” in order for it to be considered a “staple product” and thus exempt from VAT.
In this case, the bread from Subway was determined to contain a 10% ratio.
The ongoing court case in the United States over Subway’s tuna, as well as the one in Ireland over Subway’s bread, is really just a matter of how much people are willing to see the raw ingredients of flour and freshly caught fish be modified before it reaches their table–and how much the staples of bread and fish can be considered healthier than other more traditionally “unhealthy” food products if they are heavily processed.
The ongoing court action is Amin et al. v. Subway Restaurants Inc. et al., U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 21-00498. Subway has roughly 37,500 outlets worldwide, with more than 24,600 in the United States and Canada.
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