July 15, 2021 — July marks month number seven of the great Subway tuna sandwich debate. In January, two California women sued Subway, alleging that they tested several of the chain’s tuna sandwiches in a lab and found that the ingredients were not tuna nor fish, but a “mixture of various concoctions” mixed together to “imitate the appearance of tuna” (via the Washington Post). Subway fought back, saying that it uses only wild-caught tuna in its subs. The plaintiffs then slightly amended the lawsuit, The New York Times reported, questioning only whether or not the tuna is “100% sustainably caught skipjack and yellowfin.”
That was only phase one of the controversy. Next, news outlet Inside Edition conducted its own investigation of the sandwiches. Reporters sent samples from three tuna subs to Applied Food Technologies for DNA testing, according to a press release sent to Mashed, and received confirmation that they all contained tuna. The story doesn’t end there. Last month, The New York Times published a story detailing its own investigation, which hired an anonymous testing center to test another round of sandwiches. The results? “No amplifiable tuna DNA was present in the sample.”