Subway’s tuna sandwich has no tuna DNA, tests find

Updated: Jun 23, 2021 / 02:21 PM CDT

A Subway restaurant is seen as the company announced a settlement over a class-action lawsuit that alleged that Subway engaged in deceptive marketing for its 6-inch and 12-inch sandwiches and served customers less food than they were paying for on October 21, 2015 in Miami, Florida. While it denies the claims, Subway said that franchisees would be required to have a measurement tool in stores to make sure loaves are 12-inches. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

(WTRF) — Tests recently done by a commercial lab have proved that no identifiable tuna DNA was found in Subway’s sandwiches, reported the New York Times.

The newspaper had 60 inches of tuna sandwiches from three different Subway locations in Los Angeles tested.

The “tuna” was removed, frozen and sent to an unidentified commercial food testing lab as the chain faces a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California earlier this year alleging the ingredient it calls “tuna” actually contains no tuna at all.

“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,” the test results read.

“One, it’s so heavily processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn’t make an identification,” a lab spokesperson said. “Or we got some and there’s just nothing there that’s tuna.”

Subway wrote an email to the newspaper denying the allegations.

“There simply is no truth to the allegations in the complaint that was filed in California,” a Subway spokeswoman wrote in the email. “Subway delivers 100 percent cooked tuna to its restaurants.”

Subway, which has nearly 40,000 locations worldwide, about half of which are in the United States, has said its tuna sandwiches are some of its best-selling.