May 10, 2023 — Subway is asking a federal judge to issue sanctions of nearly USD 618,000 (EUR 563,000) against the attorneys in a lawsuit alleging it sold “fake” tuna.
In documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Subway called the lawsuit “unmeritorious” and contended the attorneys for plaintiffs Nilima Amin and Karen Dhanowa knew the claims were false prior to filing suit.
November 15, 2021 — Pescatarians may want to avoid eating Subway’s tuna, if one is to believe the allegations in a revived lawsuit questioning the ingredients in the restaurant chain’s seafood.
Nineteen of 20 tuna samples from Subway outlets throughout Southern California contained animal protein including chicken, pork or cattle, but no discernible tuna DNA, according to the latest complaint filed on Monday in U.S. District Court in California.
Subway dismissed the claims in the amended suit, the third filed this year, as “meritless” and defended its fish as “high-quality, wild-caught, 100% tuna.” The company’s lawyers are in the process of reviewing the claim and plan to file a new motion to dismiss what they called a “reckless and improper lawsuit.”
Read the full story at CBS News
October 8, 2021 — A federal judge has dismissed a class-action lawsuit claiming Subway Restaurants’ tuna sandwiches and wraps did not contain any actual tuna.
The lawsuit was filed on 21 January, and subsequently gained national media attention when a New York Times report claimed its lab testing didn’t find evidence of tuna DNA in the company’s sandwiches. At the time, the company defended its tuna products, and DNA testing experts contacted by SeafoodSource confirmed that the tests used by The New York Times wouldn’t have been adequate to detect tuna DNA.
Read the full story at SeafoodSource
July 15, 2021 — Subway’s CEO defended the company’s sandwiches after a class-action lawsuit questioned the veracity and sustainability of the chain’s tuna.
“We’re very proud of our tuna,” Subway CEO John Chidsey told CNN, adding that it is one of his two favorite sandwiches.
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.”
June 25, 2021 — Subway Restaurants has come to the defense of its tuna products and said it utilizes 100 percent wild tuna, after facing a class-action lawsuit and a New York Times report that claimed testing found no tuna DNA in the restaurant chain’s tuna sandwiches.
The DNA testing utilized by the lab in the New York Times report is not accurate for canned and/or processed tuna, according to both Subway and the founder of a top DNA testing lab for cooked and processed tuna who spoke to SeafoodSource.
June 23, 2021 — After facing a class-action lawsuit claiming that Subway’s tuna sandwiches do not contain tuna and the restaurant chain cannot prove the fish is sustainable, a new DNA lab report shows there is no tuna in the company’s tuna sandwiches.
The New York Times set up an independent lab test of 60 inches of tuna sandwiches from three Subway restaurants in Los Angeles, California. The testing, which included a polymerase chain reaction test that searched for DNA of five different tuna species, detected no tuna in the sandwiches.
June 22, 2021 — The Subway tuna lawsuit drama continues.
In January a lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleging that the sandwich chain’s tuna sandwich is “made with anything but tuna.” Independent lab tests that were reportedly taken from multiple California Subway locations found that the tuna was a “mixture of concoctions that do not constitute tuna, yet have been blended together by defendants to imitate the appearance of tuna.” The two plaintiffs, Karen Dhanowa and Nilima Amin of Alameda County, were hoping to get their claim certified as class action, which would open the case up to others in California who bought tuna from Subway after January 21, 2017.
February 1, 2021 — Subway is vigorously defending the tuna is uses in its sandwiches and wraps after a class action lawsuit filed in late January claimed that the massive sandwich chain’s sandwiches do not contain any of the fish.
Subway’s tuna products contain “a mixture of various concoctions that do not constitute tuna, [which] have been blended together by (Subway) to imitate the appearance of tuna,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed on 21 January in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Legal Newsline reported.