In February 2017, the Canadian Broadcasting Company's Marketplace DNA tested six different pieces of chicken from five fast food restaurants - finding that poultry from A&W, McDonald's, Tim Hortons, and Wendy's contained between 88.5% and 89.4% chicken DNA.
Subway?
53.6% for their oven roasted chicken contained actual chicken, and 42.8% of their chicken strips. According to the CBC, the rest of it was soy protein, according to VICE.
Needless to say, Subway was a little upset - filing a $210 lawsuit against the CBC, claiming the study was "recklessly and maliciously" published and that the DNA test "lacked scientific rigor."
The company claims lost customers, lost reputation, and that they had lost a "significant" amount of sales according to the report.
"The accusations made by CBC Marketplace about the content of our chicken are absolutely false and misleading," the company said after the report was published.
Nearly three years later, the suit has been tossed.
Source: ZeroHedge
Also at Vice
(Score: 5, Funny) by isostatic on Friday December 06 2019, @02:15PM (5 children)
Wow, a $210 lawsuit!
(Score: 3, Informative) by EvilSS on Friday December 06 2019, @03:09PM (1 child)
(Score: 3, Funny) by pipedwho on Friday December 06 2019, @09:55PM
Yeah, but it's about $1,500,000 Australian dollars.
(Score: 5, Informative) by barbara hudson on Friday December 06 2019, @05:20PM (1 child)
Direct from the defendants, the CBC, in the lawsuit. This affects ALL subway customers, because you're not getting what you paid for, and you should know about it.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 07 2019, @07:14PM
Oh,... million. Where are the [sic] club now?
(Score: 2) by LVDOVICVS on Friday December 06 2019, @06:15PM
My mother lives in Canada. And if I've done my done my math right 210 Loonies is -14.95USD. But that's before the PST and GST (taxes), which once they've been added in it's around $550.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @02:23PM (3 children)
And now, probably like many others, I’ve heard about the report of which I was previously completely unaware prior to the lawsuit.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @07:21PM (2 children)
I didnt need a report to tell me their meat is trash thou. It is quite apparent.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday December 06 2019, @10:16PM
You beat me to it. Take a look at the meatballs, or the pre-cooked bacon -- they both look like real meat, and probably are at least 99% meat. But the chicken, oh god, it looks like slivers of pale tofu with fake grill marks on it, like a crackhead kept laying their hot crackpipe over it in different spots.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 07 2019, @09:02PM
To be honest, the chicken they use is probably worse than the filler.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDyEDX9SH0Y [youtube.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @02:30PM (30 children)
From actual court documents,
Also, $210 Million
So lawsuit continues but not against CBC. It continues against Trent University
(Score: 5, Informative) by mobydisk on Friday December 06 2019, @02:43PM (29 children)
So essentially, the entire headline and summary is completely wrong. Subway's lawsuit continues unhindered. The courts merely decided that the liability is with the lab not the reporters. That makes sense.
The Zerohedge article also quotes Subway's PR response, which claims:
So the question is:
* Did this subset of Subway restaurants go rogue and use cheaper chicken?
* Did Subway setup the new tests to look better?
* Did Subway quickly change their chicken as a result of the article and cover it up?
* Did Trent mess-up the tests?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @03:07PM (25 children)
If they verified soy in the 1% range then it can't be 100% chicken. It can only be 99% chicken at best.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @03:14PM (19 children)
But not if Subway always gives 110%.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Friday December 06 2019, @03:19PM (18 children)
Subway cannot even give 100% of a footlong sandwich. Even in an age where we have developed 12 inch rulers.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @06:33PM (1 child)
Trump is taller than that.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday December 06 2019, @07:04PM
Speak loudly and carry a teeny tiny stick with tiny hands.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Funny) by fustakrakich on Friday December 06 2019, @08:02PM (14 children)
12 inch rulers
What's that in Canadian inches?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Friday December 06 2019, @10:27PM (9 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday December 07 2019, @02:23AM (7 children)
While officially true, the hardware store still sells 2x4's in 8ft (and 10ft, 12ft etc) lengths, 4x8 sheets of plywood in various fractions of an inch and so on. Carpentry is one trade where Imperial works better then metric. Lots of other examples where we haven't completely dropped Imperial, I still measure my fuel mileage in Imperial gallons per mile.
The UK still has road signage in Imperial as well.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday December 07 2019, @03:37AM (6 children)
Just back from the hardware shop (not by any stretch a timber merchant) - couldn't find anything in 4"x2", closest was 90x35 dressed pine (nothing even close in rough sawn). But I did find ply in 2440x1220 , which is very close to 8'x4'. Nothing at all sold in imperial measures.
Asking for information here, but how (having a mind cast in imperial concrete doesn't count)?.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday December 07 2019, @03:40AM
SHOULD read:
Just back from the hardware shop (not by any stretch a timber merchant) - couldn't find anything in 4"x2", closest was 90x35 dressed pine (nothing even close in rough sawn). But I did find ply in 2440x1220 , which is very close to 8'x4'. Nothing at all sold in imperial measures.
Asking for information here, but how (having a mind cast in imperial concrete doesn't count)?.
I need an "edit" button.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday December 07 2019, @04:15AM (4 children)
I'll answer here, taking into consideration your corrections.
I'm on the west coast of Canada, Barbara is a few thousand miles east (see I automatically said miles), not sure where you are but would be interested if in Canada and which Province, where we were talking about.
I find it easier to use base 12 sorta and divide into1/3rds, 1/4ers as well as halves, which seem to be more common actions doing carpentry. Same with using base 8 for fractions.
Perhaps the problem was spending the first dozen years of my life thinking in Imperial, though my wife, who spent all her school years learning metric, still thinks in Imperial quite a bit.
It does show that it can take a few generations to totally switch. If someone said to me that they had a 1220x610x12.5 piece of plywood, it would take effort to visualize whereas a 2x4x1/2 piece of plywood is easily visualized for me with the units being mostly obvious.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 07 2019, @07:24AM (1 child)
Technically the base fractions used in carpentry are 64ths.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday December 07 2019, @07:29AM
Eight squared. 100 in base 8
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday December 07 2019, @12:10PM (1 child)
I wasn't aware we were talking about Canada, I thought you were in the UK, by the road sign reference. I'm in Australia.
Fair enough, I'm decimal myself, and have trouble visualising any fraction but 1/2.
I started using metric halfway through high school (physics classes), and stopped using imperial altogether in my early twenties when Oz went metric.
One of my hobbies is still firmly imperial based, and I have to convert to metric to visualise things (someone says "five inches" I think "OK, that's about 5*25=125, say 130mm"). I've learned to convert to imperial when talking to other hobbyists (eg I think 5mm and say "just under a quarter inch, by about uhmmm - a thirty second or so").
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday December 07 2019, @05:49PM
It's interesting. Looking at the wiki articles on metrication in Australia and Canada, you started a bit earlier but went slower and we both were mostly metric by the late '70's yet it seems to have taken much more in Australia. One big difference was being right next to America, so watching American TV including commercials and lots of other exposure, also perhaps more resistance here.
40 plus years after metrication, people still use standard a lot with industries such as building using quite a bit of standard as I described, ads in stores having pounds in larger print and such. Most Canadians, even children, seem to be bi-lingual when it comes to measuring stuff. Might vary in different parts of the country.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday December 09 2019, @03:52PM
America will go to metric.
Then people the world over will ask . . . what's that in American centimeters?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday December 07 2019, @02:16AM (3 children)
America switched to Canadian inches of 2.54 cm (a yard of exactly 0.9144 metres) back in the 1959, except surveyors. Yes your inch shrunk by 2 millionths of an inch (1/8th of an inch over a mile) to be inline with the Commonwealth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 07 2019, @07:36AM (2 children)
That is one reason why surveyors deprecated the use of inches to avoid confusion. In my experience, they also tend to avoid survey miles too, and mark them as such when used. I mostly get links, rods, chains, furs and leagues in the surveys or legal descriptions I see done now.
(Score: 2) by Webweasel on Saturday December 07 2019, @02:02PM
The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday December 07 2019, @05:21PM
Well if you think in links and chains, the average N. American lot becomes simple to measure, 1 chain x 10 chains.
40 odd years back I had a job that involved some traversing (rough surveying) and we used a metric chain of 50 metres. Compass was still in degrees though.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday December 07 2019, @01:16AM
Also, it's nowhere near a foot long, at most 6 inches, 4 when flaccid. More Subway exaggeration.
(Score: 4, Funny) by sgleysti on Friday December 06 2019, @03:16PM (4 children)
Read it just a little more carefully:
They're only claiming that the chicken part of the chicken strips is 100% chicken. I'll bet the "independent laboratories" were just philosophical working groups who verified the tautology. The response from the group that asked, "but what is chicken anyway?" was ignored.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @03:22PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 07 2019, @12:22AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Webweasel on Saturday December 07 2019, @02:02PM
That's why it tastes like tuna fish!
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday December 07 2019, @12:40AM
There's a 50 - 50 chance of it being chicken, though there's only a 10 percent chance of that.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday December 06 2019, @03:18PM
Yep, from the linked court document . . .
So Trent needs only to defend the reliability of their DNA testing, which CBC relied upon.
If Subway did set up new tests to look better, or quickly change their chicken formulation, it would be important for Trent to show that. Doing so may involve subpoenaing documents and witnesses to show Subway's efforts to make Trent's tests appear unreliable.
Trent messing up its tests, IMO, seems to be the most crucial question at this point.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Friday December 06 2019, @05:25PM (1 child)
Trent university will likely prevail. It's up to subway to show that, by a preponderance of the evidence (this is a civil, not criminal, case, so the standard of proof is "preponderance of evidence") that Trent university acted with malicious intent when doing the tests, which is going to be damn hard, or that the tests are so flawed that it would be unreasonable to have performed them.
The same tests that are used by the government to determine whether food fraud is taking place when people label cheap fish meat as more expensive meat.
Subway continues to screw up by drawing attention to this story. Gotta love Barbra Streisand.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @09:48PM
You are most of the way there. According to the ruling, Subway isn't attacking the actual DNA testing procedure, which makes since because one of their claims against CBC depended on the same test done by other Universities. Instead, they are attacking the way Trent carried out the DNA testing procedure. They are alleging that the standard of care was not met by Trent because their test was so far removed from both the other testing and the prescribed ingredients. Basically the only way that the results could be that off is that Trent had to screwed up the tests in a way that they should have noticed or verified.
Now how that claim shakes out and the experts on each side fall should prove interest in a few years when all the discovery and motions are done.
(Score: 5, Touché) by srobert on Friday December 06 2019, @02:53PM (6 children)
Subway spokesman Jared Fogle hasn't responded to our requests for a response to this story.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @03:10PM (4 children)
Maybe he's chicken.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Farmer Tim on Friday December 06 2019, @03:56PM (3 children)
Came for the news, stayed for the soap opera.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday December 06 2019, @06:56PM (1 child)
53.6% grown?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday December 07 2019, @12:37AM
46.4% underage children!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 07 2019, @02:16AM
So ... is he too chicken or is he not chicken enough?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @05:44PM
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons [wikipedia.org] issued a statement that reads, in part:
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Friday December 06 2019, @03:51PM (9 children)
With more and more people identifying as flexitarians or somehow reducing their meat intake, providing a high protein patty that tastes like the real thing is a big market opportunity. Beyond and Impossible are vegan options, but there is probably a market for options that use just enough meat to get the flavour correct.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday December 06 2019, @07:05PM (8 children)
It could have been, but their response has probably blown it.
Also there are a number of people who want to reduce their soy intake from worries about estrogen mimic hormones. So they'd have needed to address that.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by dry on Saturday December 07 2019, @02:50AM (7 children)
There's also quite a few people whose guts react in a very gassy way to soy. My son is one of them, actually got threatened with being kicked out of school due to his gas problems which went away when we substituted rice milk for soy milk. He's lactose intolerant.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday December 07 2019, @04:02AM (6 children)
Interesting. That sounds more like a biome problem than a problem that's not fixable, though. Just a guess on my part, however.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday December 07 2019, @04:30AM (5 children)
Probably is a biome problem. The problem with soy is that it is not very digestible. Perhaps one day we'll switch to something like hemp seed which is a way better meat replacement, not only having all the essential proteins but also the essential oils and much easier to grow.
He's also quite autistic and didn't start talking (and settle down) until we took him off dairy products when he was in grade 1. I could also tell really quick whenever he did have some diary after we cut him off as he acted out a lot more. This may be biome related though there is probably a genetic part. Most of humanity has problems digesting lactose including me and his mother, whose genetic background did not contain milk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 07 2019, @07:42AM (4 children)
Going a bit out on a limb, but I hope she didn't inherent the flush too. One of my friends has that bad and is so conditioned by it that thinking of drinking alcohol makes her queasy.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday December 07 2019, @05:24PM (3 children)
If you mean the inability to properly metabolize alcohol, no she didn't though quite a large part of the Earth's population seems to have that problem, or is it a gift.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 07 2019, @07:44PM
GP was probably talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Flush [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday December 09 2019, @05:12PM (1 child)
Who is "she"? I thought you were talking about your son?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday December 09 2019, @05:15PM
bleh, nvm
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by datapharmer on Friday December 06 2019, @05:20PM (1 child)
I thought those plant based meats were supposed to be all the rage right now. Shouldn't this new revelation help their sales?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06 2019, @06:21PM
Not among people allergic to soy protein or whatever other unannounced ingredients are hiding in their products.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by RandomFactor on Friday December 06 2019, @06:02PM (3 children)
Personally I'll give preference to a decent 'partial' meat. I've never understood the all or nothing mindset of 100% Meatitarians or 0% Vegetablinarians
What's wrong with tossing in a bit of Soy or whatnot, just provide me the option to chose. Label them honestly and if it's cheaper to do 30% soy, drop the price a accordingly.
If it's cheaper CHARGE A LITTLE LESS, instead these idiots try to deceive people into thinking it is 100% Meat and charge the same as if it was.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 3, Funny) by srobert on Friday December 06 2019, @07:39PM (2 children)
Which brings up the question, how much soy is in Soylent Green? As long as they label honestly I'm good with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 07 2019, @02:18AM
"As long as they label honestly"
At least you have Soylentnews keeping them honest.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Sunday December 08 2019, @02:08PM
0%—Soylent Green is people!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 07 2019, @12:13AM (1 child)
I've seen some nutrition labels for imported foods that listed the exact percentages for all of the ingredients. That should be mandatory for foods with nutrition labels, and joints like Subway should include that on their website and on request. In Subway's case, just list it for each type of meat, bread, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 07 2019, @07:54AM
The reason why the U.S. doesn't require it is that different companies claim that they might as well publish their secret recipes. This is also the reason why they can get away with things like "natural flavoring" when it makes up less than a certain percentage of the food. The closest you can get is based on the fact that ingredient labels are supposed to include ALL ingredients in order of most common to least common. You can then cross reference that with nutritional information and the serving size designations to estimate the approximate amount of each item in the food.
It is also worth noting that restaurants in the U.S. are already required to post the nutritional information somewhere in the store or indicate where it is on their website AND provide it on request. But so you don't have to bother the staff, you usually see the "nutritional menu" in one of the entry vestibules, on the counter, or by the fountain drinks.