NY Times test finds no identifiable tuna DNA in Subway's tuna sandwich | Hacker News Reader

NY Times test finds no identifiable tuna DNA in Subway's tuna sandwich

thehill.com

14 pointsrevicon8 comments

Once the fish has been cooked, it’s hard to find any identifiable DNA at all.

So, kind of a non-story.

Now, go into the processing facility and grab the fish before it’s cooked, and test the DNA. Then you might have a story. Or maybe not.

These NIH and FDA articles indicate DNA testing on cooked fish is possible and a regular occurrence.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18791146/ https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/what-kind-fis...

That it's possible, does not mean that this solutions were used in this case. In the first place the FDA did not test here, just unamend labs. And it should also be noted that it seeme that there are other means of processing besides cooking which can make the meat harder to identify.

The Article reads as if they tested against a preselected choice of possible results, not the full FDA-database. The only result here is that they were unable to identify the origin of this food. But we don't know whether this happend because they were lacking data, or the processing made it not possible to identify it, or whether it really is not tuna. We only know they could not identify it as tuna.

This seems very unlikely to me. I'd believe it if they said there was cheaper fish in there as well, to pad it out. But it would take a huge effort to make a passable fake tuna with zero tuna in it. Tuna has a distinctive flavor and texture, and it wouldn't be easy to turn pollock or tilapia into that.

So I'm curious about the tests. Cooking is one known reason why they might be incorrect. I'm sure there are others.

Following up on their "chicken" not being chicken-- https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2017/02/28/subways-den...

Maybe they should rebrand from "Eat fresh" to "Maybe this isn't cardboard"?

Whatever it is, it’s delicious.

I've got some vat grown meat to sell you.

Are you kidding me?

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