Earlier this week, the New York Times threw gallons of gasoline on Subway’s Northern California tuna lawsuit by releasing a report from an independent study that analyzed the DNA of the sandwich restaurant chain’s tuna. The report found that there was no tuna DNA present in any part of the “60 inches worth of Subway tuna sandwiches” that were tested, and upon hearing that, many people ran off with jokes about Subway serving fake tuna to its customers.
As previously reported, the NYT’s report also presented an extremely important caveat, in which the people behind the study admitted that DNA testing may not be the most accurate test to find out what Subway’s tuna is made out of. “There’s two conclusions. One, it’s so heavily processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn’t make an identification,” one of the lab workers revealed. “Or we got some and there’s just nothing there that’s tuna.”
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Regardless of how bad the situation may currently look, however, Subway is still adamant that their now-infamous tuna is in fact “100% wild-caught, cooked tuna.” According to Complex, Subway has responded to the controversy by releasing the following statement:
A recent New York Times report indicates that DNA testing is an unreliable methodology for identifying processed tuna. This report supports and reflects the position that Subway has taken in relation to a meritless lawsuit filed in California and with respect to DNA testing as a means to identify cooked proteins. DNA testing is simply not a reliable way to identify denatured proteins, like Subway’s tuna, which was cooked before it was tested.
Unfortunately, various media outlets have confused the inability of DNA testing to confirm a specific protein with a determination that the protein is not present. The testing that the New York Times report references does not show that there is not tuna in Subway’s tuna. All it says is that the testing could not confirm tuna, which is what one would expect from a DNA test of denatured proteins.
Are you buying Subway’s stance on the situation or are you still skeptical as to what the sandwich restaurant chain’s tune is made out of?
[via]