But it’s safe to say that Karen Dhanowa and Nilima Amin — the plaintiffs in the lawsuit — do not love Subway’s tuna, which they believe is “anything but tuna,” according to their filing from January. (Ms. Dhanowa and Ms. Amin’s legal team declined to comment on the case for this article.)
What exactly the plaintiffs believed the sandwiches contained, they wouldn’t say. But in their filing from January, they alleged that Subway has deliberately misled customers by selling products “falsely advertised as ‘tuna’” in order to charge a “premium price.”
Subway’s spokeswoman, when asked about the progress of the case, reiterated the statement shared when the original complaint was filed.
“The taste and quality of our tuna make it one of Subway’s most popular products and these baseless accusations threaten to damage our franchisees,” she wrote in an email.
“Given the facts, the lawsuit constitutes a reckless and improper attack on Subway’s brand and goodwill,” she added.
With all of that in mind, I began searching for a commercial lab that could test a sample of Subway’s product. A handful of them politely declined my inquiries, citing technical limitations and company policies that made my tuna ineligible for analysis. Eventually, I found myself on the phone with a spokesman for a lab that specializes in fish testing. He agreed to test the tuna but asked that the lab not be named in this article, as he did not want to jeopardize any opportunities to work directly with America’s largest sandwich chain.
For about $500, his lab could conduct a PCR test — which rapidly makes millions or billions of copies of a specific DNA sample — and try to tell me whether this substance included one of five different tuna species.
According to the Seafood List, which is compiled by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, there are 15 species of nomadic saltwater fish that can be labeled “tuna.”
Subway’s tuna and seafood sourcing statement says the chain only sells skipjack and yellowfin tuna — species that a lab would recognize as Katsuwonus pelamis and T. albacares.
Before it lands on a Subway sandwich, that tuna, like the majority of commercially sold tuna, is caught by fishermen working in exclusive economic zones. (E.E.Z.s are areas that extend roughly 200 nautical miles from each country’s coast; the U.S., with over 13,000 miles of coastline, controls the largest E.E.Z. in the world, containing 3.4 million square nautical miles of ocean.)
Though Subway declined to disclose its tuna suppliers, Sage, who has been a Subway manager in California for three years, shared some details about how the product arrives at her location. (Sage asked not to use her full name out of fear of reprisal from her employer.)
“The tuna comes in a case and inside the case, there are six aluminum pouches and it’s just like a pressed, vacuum sealed slab of tuna,” Sage said. “It’s flaky and it’s clearly soaked in water — it’s like a brine, so it’s just soaked in salt water — and it’s just flaky tuna. We just spread it apart with our hands” — gloved, of course — “and mix it with mayo.”