The New York Times sent frozen samples of tuna meat ordered from three different Los Angeles-area Subway shops to a lab that specializes in fish testing, in order to determine how much tuna is in the tuna sandwiches. The world’s largest subway chain is caught in the middle of a class-action suit in California that claims the popular tuna subs are “completely bereft of tuna as an ingredient.” So the Times decided to analyze the sandwich’s main ingredient itself.
The Subway tuna samples were run through a $500 PCR test — aka a polymerase chain reaction test, which detects genetic material from a specific organism by making millions or billions of copies from a DNA sample. The lab was looking for traces of one of five tuna species, including the skipjack and yellowfin tuna that Subway’s tuna and seafood sourcing statement says are used in its sandwiches.
“No amplifiable tuna DNA was present in the sample.” — Lab report quoted in the New York Times
The results: “No amplifiable tuna DNA was present in the sample and so we obtained no amplification products from the DNA,” the report read. “Therefore, we cannot identify the species.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheap_Sunglasses
