What Makes Tuna, Tuna? Subway Lawsuit Aims to Find Out

July 18, 2022 – The sandwich chain Subway is not any stranger to scandals. In 2013, Subway settled a declare that alleged its footlong subs have been shorter than marketed. Then, in 2014, it endured a scandal over a “yoga mat” chemical present in its bread. Now, the world’s largest sandwich chain is dealing with one other controversy: whether or not the tuna fish it makes use of is really 100% tuna.

This month, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar rejected Subway’s request to dismiss a lawsuit over the franchise chain’s tuna merchandise, ruling Nilima Amin of Alameda County, CA, could proceed the swimsuit she filed in January 2021.

The authentic criticism mentioned Subway tuna merchandise have been misbranded beneath federal and California legal guidelines, main clients to pay extra for “premium priced food dishes” and to imagine they’re consuming “only tuna and no other fish species, animal products, or miscellaneous products.”

“Subway misrepresents its products as ‘100% tuna,’” the renewed 2022 case reads. “[Consumers] were tricked into buying food items that wholly lacked the ingredient they reasonably thought they were purchasing.”

Subway: ‘We Are Disappointed’

The court docket dismissed components of the plaintiff’s declare, together with the allegation that Subway deceived clients by promoting sandwiches that weren’t 100% tuna.

“Consumers understand that tuna salad is usually mixed with mayonnaise, and that a tuna sandwich will contain bread,” the choose’s ruling argued.

But he didn’t dismiss the overstated tuna claims.

Subway pushed again, insisting that any non-tuna DNA discovered is the results of contact between different substances used to make tuna sandwiches and wraps.

“Subway serves 100% tuna,” a Subway spokesperson instructed Today. “We are disappointed the Court felt it couldn’t dismiss the plaintiffs’ reckless and improper lawsuit at this stage. However, we are confident that Subway will prevail when the Court has an opportunity to consider all the evidence.”

A Fishy Investigation

Previously, the plaintiff offered a marine biologist’s evaluation of 20 tuna samples from 20 Subway places that discovered “no detectable tuna DNA sequences whatsoever” in all however one. What’s extra, an investigation by The New York Times concluded “no amplifiable tuna DNA” was current in its lab-tested samples.

The lab commissioned by the Times provided two options for the destructive outcomes.

“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,” a lab spokesperson instructed the newspaper.

But whenInside Edition despatched samples to a lab, the outcomes have been within the sandwich chain’s favor: The Subway tuna was, in actual fact, tuna. Subway cites Inside Edition’s “more accurate” lab testing course of through Applied Food Technologies in protection of one among its hottest choices.

“Applied Food Technologies is one of the only labs in the country with the ability to test broken-down fish DNA, which makes it more accurate in testing processed tuna,” Subway defined on its web site. “AFT conducted more than 50 individual tests on 150 pounds of Subway’s tuna for Inside Edition and confirmed yellowfin and/or skipjack tuna in every sample.”

As the case continues, Subway has launched an promoting marketing campaign defending its tuna subs as “100% real.”