*We previously reported that two California women have filed a lawsuit against Subway, claiming its tuna contains no tuna or any fish.
According to a lawsuit filed against the fast-food chain, Karen Dhanowa and Nilima Amin allege Subway’s tuna is a “mixture of various concoctions that do not constitute tuna, yet have been blended together by defendants to imitate the appearance of tuna.”
Dhanowa and Amin believe they “were tricked into buying food items that wholly lacked the ingredients they reasonably thought they were purchasing,” based on its labeling, according to the lawsuit filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, CBS reported.
Amid the lawsuit, The New York Times did its own analysis. The newspaper used “60 inches’ worth of Subway tuna sandwiches” purchased from three locations in LA, and shipped the frozen meat to a commercial lab for analysis.
The New York Times on Sunday published the results: “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.”
READ MORE: Lawsuit Claims Subway’s Tuna Doesn’t Have Tuna or Any Fish
A representative for the lab said there are two possible scenarios for this outcome.
“One, it’s so heavily processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn’t make an identification,” the person said. “Or we got some and there’s just nothing there that’s tuna.”
Dhanowa and Amin’s lawsuit alleges that “Consumers are consistently misled into purchasing the products for the commonly known and/or advertised benefits and characteristics of tuna when in fact no such benefits could be had, given that the products are in fact devoid of tuna,” the suit claims, noting that “independent testing has repeatedly affirmed, the products are made from anything but tuna,” the court papers allege.
Subway has dismissed the claims as baseless.
“These claims are meritless,” a Subway representative said in a statement in January. “Tuna is one of our most popular sandwiches. Our restaurants receive 100% wild-caught tuna, mix it with mayonnaise, and serve on a freshly made sandwich to our guests.”
“Subway will vigorously defend itself against these and any other baseless efforts to mischaracterize and tarnish the high-quality products that Subway and its franchisees provide to their customers,” the statement added.
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