The Tuna That Wasn't... But Probably Was

There’s a big brouhaha afoot about whether Subway’s tuna sandwiches actually contain… you know… tuna.

A lawsuit in California got all this started, and then the New York Times got into the act, and then, well, there are claims and counter-claims, virtually all of which are predictable: the plaintiffs say X, and the company spokesperson says not-X.

Curmie is not a fan of either Subway or tuna sandwiches, at least those not made from a small can of Starkist or Chicken of the Sea.  If he’s ever eaten a Subway tuna sandwich, it was probably 20+ years ago.  So it’s not like there’s a lot riding on the outcome of this kerfuffle from a personal perspective.  I could cheerfully live out the rest of my days without Subway or tuna sandwiches, let alone both at once.

Anyway, let’s take this from the beginning.  In the January Washington Post article that started any national interest in this case, reporter Tim Carman writes that:

The star ingredient, according to the lawsuit, is “made from anything but tuna.” Based on independent lab tests of “multiple samples” taken from Subway locations in California, the “tuna” is “a mixture of various concoctions that do not constitute tuna, yet have been blended together by defendants to imitate the appearance of tuna,” according to the complaint. Shalini Dogra, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, declined to say exactly what ingredients the lab tests revealed….  “We found that the ingredients were not tuna and not fish,” the attorney said in an email to The Washington Post.

Subway wasn’t about to let those claims go unrefuted.  Part of spokeswoman Maggie Truax’s statement:

These baseless accusations threaten to damage our franchisees, small business owners who work tirelessly to uphold the high standards that Subway sets for all of its products, including its tuna. Given the facts, the lawsuit constitutes a reckless and improper attack on Subway’s brand and goodwill, and on the livelihood of its California franchisees. Indeed, there is no basis in law or fact for the plaintiffs’ claims, which are frivolous and are being pursued without adequate investigation.

Unfortunately, this lawsuit is part of a trend in which the named plaintiffs’ attorneys have been targeting the food industry in an effort to make a name for themselves in that space. Subway will vigorously defend itself against these and any other baseless efforts to mischaracterize and tarnish the high-quality products that Subway and its franchisees provide to their customers, in California and around the world, and intends to fight these claims through all available avenues if they are not immediately dismissed.

Well, OK, then.

Several months later, the New York Times got into the act.  They sent reporter Julia Carmel to do a little investigation.  She bought “more than sixty inches worth of Subway tuna sandwiches.  [She] removed and froze the tuna meat, then shipped it across the country to a commercial food testing lab.”  The spokesman for the lab in question “agreed to test the tuna but asked that the lab not be named…, as he did not want to jeopardize any opportunities to work directly with America’s largest sandwich chain.”

The results: 

No amplifiable tuna DNA was present in the sample and so we obtained no amplification products from the DNA…. Therefore, we cannot identify the species…. There’s two conclusions.  One, it’s so heavily processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn’t make an identification. Or we got some and there’s just nothing there that’s tuna.

That seems rather damning… but is it?  First off, Carmel notes that the plaintiffs were backing off at least some of their claim: no longer was the complaint that the stuff of those sandwiches wasn’t fish at all, but rather that it wasn’t “100% sustainably caught skipjack and yellowfin tuna,” as advertised on the company’s sourcing website. 

This is interesting in that this revelation cuts both ways.  One the one hand, it suggests that the initial claim, and the attending publicity, was fraudulent.  On the other hand, it also could be taken to mean that although they couldn’t prove the initial claim, they can prove this one.

The lab’s explanation also needs to be teased out.  Carmel writes, “Once tuna has been cooked, its DNA becomes denatured — meaning that the fish’s characteristic properties have likely been destroyed, making it difficult, if not impossible, to identify.”  And tuna is indeed cooked, twice (!) before making it to a Subway franchise. 

Moreover, when Inside Edition tried the same experiment (other than gathering their samples from New York instead of LA), the results were uniformly positive for tuna.  A couple of things stand out here.  First, the lab in question was identified, unlike the one the Times used.  Inside Edition used Applied Food Technologies in Florida.  LeeAnn Applewhite, AFT’s CEO, confirmed that the tuna sandwiches her firm tested were, in fact, tuna.

And now Curmie is even more confused.  Let’s see: the company that says what the country’s largest sandwich chain would want them to say is willing to be identified; the one that supports (sort of) the lawsuit isn’t.  Curmie hastens to add that it would take considerably more evidence to assert that either of these labs are doing anything untoward, but the coincidence does make a skeptic raise an eyebrow at the very least.

Moreover, does the fact that AFT can confirm the presence of tuna in the tuna mean that the absence in the tests conducted by whatever labs the plaintiffs in the lawsuit really does show that there was no tuna in the “tuna” they tested?  Or did they use different tests?  Or did Subway have an “oh, shit, they’re on to us; we’d better start putting tuna in the tuna” moment?  Curmie did well in high school biology, but that was a half century ago, and somehow I suspect the answers to these questions might require some actual expertise, not just the ability to score well on the Regents exam.  (Curmie wonders if those things even exist any more in New York State.)

Of course, two other ideas need to be factored in.  First, even if what got served as tuna wasn’t actually tuna, the chances are good that Subway is the victim rather than the perpetrator: that the deception comes from the cannery, not the distributor.  Carmel is quoted in a follow-up piece entitled “Inside Our Subway Tuna Sandwich Test” that “Everyone I talked to said that if it’s anyone’s fault, it isn’t Subway’s.”  Carmel’s story also quotes Peter Horn, the director of the Ending Illegal Fishing Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts, that “it would be difficult to place blame on Subway.”  Tuna is cheap enough to begin with, so the savings wouldn’t be worth the risk to reputation, even in the most amoral of scenaria.   

Finally, there’s the suggestion that perhaps yes, it’s tuna, but not of the best quality.  Well, duh.  I don’t know how to break this to you, Gentle Reader, but Subway does not qualify as fine dining.  Curmie and Beloved Spouse went out to dinner a couple of nights ago (the first time we’d done so post-COVID, as it happens).  We went to a place that calls itself an “ale-house and bistro.”  Curmie had a cheeseburger.  It was considerably better than what one could buy at one of the fast-food joints that line our city’s major north-south thoroughfare.  It also cost twice as much as one of those places would charge.  Curmie attracts a pretty intelligent readership, so he’s betting you already considered the distinct possibility that these two concepts might be linked, perhaps even causally.

Of course, if there is a misrepresentation, even if Subway isn’t directly responsible, it’s reasonable to wonder just how rigorous they are at overseeing the integrity of their products.  Conversely, the plaintiffs may have simply have hired a couple of shyster lawyers looking for a juicy settlement, truth be damned.  Or both.  Certainly it’s difficult to feel too much sympathy for either side.

Curmie’s best guess: it’s tuna.  Will he be eating a Subway tuna sub any time in the near future?  No.  But he wouldn’t have been doing so, anyway.

The Citizens Who Aren’t... But Actually Are.

The news headlines of late are almost universally depressing. There’s the pretentious and largely hypocritical brouhaha over Nike’s featuring Colin Kaepernick in an ad. There were the totally disingenuous SCOTUS confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, marked by petulant grand-standing from the left and outright mendacity from the right. And seriously, is there a single Senator whose chances of voting other than party line are better than 10%? There are the sadly predictable lies (yes, lies, not merely cherry-picking or decontextualizing) from Lying Ted Cruz (remember, that’s the moniker applied by one Donald J. Trump) about challenger Beto O’Rourke in the most intriguing race in Curmie’s adopted state of Texas.

All of these stories are, to borrow a phrase from Stevie Nicks, hauntingly familiar. This is largely because politicians lie and people are stupid. But there is something more than a little insidious about the media’s fascination with these tired variations on a banal theme: real stories, ones that actually tell us something about the direction we’re heading as a nation, are buried below the proverbial fold… at best. One the the most significant of these is a recent article from the Washington Post’s Kevin Sieff. Here’s the key paragraph:

In some cases, passport applicants with official U.S. birth certificates are being jailed in immigration detention centers and entered into deportation proceedings. In others, they are stuck in Mexico, their passports suddenly revoked when they tried to reenter the United States. As the Trump administration attempts to reduce both legal and illegal immigration, the government’s treatment of passport applicants in South Texas shows how U.S. citizens are increasingly being swept up by immigration enforcement agencies.

This is outrageous. We can start with the State Department’s assertion that it “has not changed policy or practice regarding the adjudication of passport applications.” Does anyone else notice the peculiar odor of bovine feces wafting from this statement, or is it just Curmie? Of course the process has changed since the xenophobic Trump administration came to power. To say otherwise would be laughable were it not for the serious repercussions at stake here.

Yes, it is almost certainly true that “the U.S.-Mexico border region happens to be an area of the country where there has been a significant incidence of citizenship fraud.” But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t tens of thousands of bona fide Latinx American citizens born and raised near—but north of—the US/Mexico border. When we add in the fact that some of the victims are military veterans or even active military and border patrol agents (!) the issue moves from problematic to scandalous. If we’re talking about men a couple of years older than Curmie, the US government not only allowed these folks to serve in the military, they insisted on it in the 1960s and early ‘70s.

It is important that we exercise a little discretion here. Not everyone with a US passport was born on this side of the border. There are, in effect, three groups of affected people: those who are intentionally and fraudulently claiming American citizenship, those who honestly believe themselves to be US citizens when the true facts of their birth suggest otherwise, and legitimate US citizens who got caught up in the wash. We can reasonably assume that the first group exists—people named Hernandez or Garcia are not more likely to lie to the government than those named Smith or Wu or Benedetti or Kleinschmidt, but they’re not significantly less likely to do so, either. As long as it’s “better” to be a US citizen than a Mexican, someone will be trying to scam the system.

But the second and third groups exist, as well. Ask Curmie when and where he was born, and he can answer… but really, it’s only hearsay. I was there, but it’s not like I remember the details.  My parents told me I was born in such-and-such a hospital at such-and-such a time on such-and-such a day. There’s a birth certificate that seems to confirm what I was told. But I have literally nothing these people don’t have… except an Anglo surname.  Oh, and by the way, by law, a passport is prima facie evidence of citizenship.

Many years ago, the town my father lived in decided that they could lay claim to a right of way through his property. There was a town hall meeting, and the town officials came up with some document from the 19th century that sort of suggested without actually saying that in certain circumstances the town could indeed lay claim to property in that way… a sort of eminent domain with literally no remuneration for landowners. Naturally the acquisitive assholes whose property wasn’t affected were in righteous dudgeon about how these greedy people could possibly want to restrict access to their private property. Dad pointed out that he (and his father before him) had been paying tax on the entire property listed on the deed, which had no amendments, since 1918 (this all happened in the 1980s). In other words, there wasn’t a single person at the town hall who had any better documentation than he did. (The town supervisors won the town hall vote, but backed off in the face of a hefty lawsuit.) 

The same phenomenon is at work here. There is not a single one of us who has more documentation than those being detained. Note that the previous sentence is expressed in quantitative rather than qualitative terms: it may well be that we have better documentation, even if no more of it. But even if that is the case, the time to question the legitimacy of a passport applicant’s credentials would be at the time of first application: not a renewal, and certainly not during the duration of a passport’s currency. To make such a decision requires substantive evidence—not just suspicion, evidence of fraud. Yet some passports issued this year are already being revoked. That the State Department is inept is not news, but they do keep coming up with new ways of demonstrating their incompetence: after all, either that initial issuance by Trump’s State Department was insufficiently vetted, or the current crackdown is a fishing expedition at best.

To me, the central issue is the presumption of the status quo. That is, someone who doesn’t already have a passport can reasonably be expected to prove that s/he deserves one. Once that document has been issued, however, that person’s citizenship has already received the imprimatur of the federal government. There’s nothing wrong with questioning the authenticity of a birth certificate, but once it’s been deemed legitimate, the burden of proof shifts. A passport-holder should never be expected to prove citizenship: the passport is proof. To overturn the government’s own ruling, it should be necessary to prove the holder is not a citizen. “But that’s hard,” say you. “Precisely,” say I.

But not only is the burden of proof misplaced, the evidence required to prove citizenship is ridiculous. Could you, Gentle Reader, provide “evidence of [your] mother’s prenatal care, [your] baptismal certificate, rental agreements from when [you were] a baby”? Curmie couldn’t. Ah, but Curmie’s parents (or their insurance) could afford a hospital instead of a midwife, and he’s white. This would appear to make all the difference. (Note: Muslim citizens are similarly being denaturalized: imagine Curmie’s surprise.)

Finally, let’s dispense with the notion that it’s business as usual. The State Department’s claims that domestic passport denials are at the lowest rate in six years for midwife cases. It may even be that this statement is literally true (and a statement from Mike Pompeo’s State Department has roughly the credibility of that Nigerian prince who writes to Curmie from time to time), but we should point out two things. First, this statistic, even if true, does not address the more sinister practice of rescinding passports already issued.

Secondly, and at least as importantly, the percentage of per se denials doesn’t really tell us much, as it appears that many applications simply end up in limbo. They’re not exactly denied, but the applicant doesn’t get a passport, either. The strategy, and please forgive Curmie for calling it as he sees it, is to delay, to pile on ridiculous new requirements, and delay some more. It is, to coin a phrase, Clintonesque. The result is the same as a denial, but there are two political advantages from the State Department’s perspective. First, State can make the kind of assertion noted above without exactly lying (merely actively misleading). But a denial is also far more likely to lead to a lawsuit—a lawsuit of the kind that plaintiffs win more often than not—than merely stalling until the applicant gives up… and there still isn’t a denial.

This stuff matters. Yes, there are leftie commentators who are comparing this issue to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II or even the worst excesses of Nazi Germany. Is that really where we are? Of course not. But have we taken far too many steps down a road towards a very nasty, xenophobic, and unjust nation? Oh, yes.

Mitt Romney's School Days: Luckily, He's Lying about Them

The recent revelation that the adolescent Mitt Romney was a self-entitled bully exhibiting behavior one classmate likened to something out of Lord of the Flies is, like so many other tidbits about Mr. Romney, both irrelevant and absolutely on point.

While we can all, I suspect, muster a little retroactive compassion for the victims of schoolyard bullies from the distant past, it really doesn’t tell us much about candidate Romney that he was a douchebag half a century ago. How he and his campaign have handled the publication of his teen-aged “pranks,” however, tells us a lot about the man who would be POTUS.

Let’s start with the simple fact that the events described in the Washington Post piece happened. They aren’t just alleged; they happened. How do we know? Well, apart from the four guys (one of them a former Republican county chairman) who are willing to go on the record and affirm the charges (and who, unlike the Swiftboaters of eight years ago, were actually there), there’s the clumsiest non-denial in recent memory: “The stories of fifty years ago seem exaggerated and off base and Governor Romney has no memory of participating in these incidents.”

Let’s do a little parsing of that sentence, shall we? The campaign doesn’t even try to argue that the “stories” are false; they’re “exaggerated.” Translation: this stuff happened. But the allegations aren’t even necessarily exaggerated; they “seem” that way. Translation: this shit sounds pretty creepy to us, too. “Governor Romney has no memory of participating…” Wow. That may be the weaseliest non-denial denial of the year. I’m here to tell you, I can remember a lot of mistakes I made as an adolescent—“incidents” (to coin a phrase) that I regret, but which, in large part because of the remorse I felt in the immediate aftermath, made me a more ethical adult. And I remember them.

I am, in other words, here to tell you that I did not tackle a classmate, restrain him, and cut off his hair because he was a little effeminate. There’s no “no memory” about this. I never did that: not the act, not the motive. Romney is lying about not remembering, but he doesn’t even have the balls to deny the actual charges… because then he’d have to call his former high school buddies liars: and we already know who has more credibility on this issue. (Hint: none of them are named Willard.) The “I can’t recall” ruse is, frankly, worse than lying about the event itself, because it adds cowardice to the already-established dishonesty.

Later, we got another story. In a free commercial hastily-arranged interview with lackey Brian Kilmeade, Romney was all chortles. Here’s Salon’s Joan Walsh on Romney’s evasion of a question about the assault on John Lauber:

“I don’t remember that incident,” Romney said, laughing. (Laughing?) “I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case.” So he obviously remembers something – but he didn’t know the guy was gay! About taunting Gary Hummel with “Atta girl,” Romney offers a similar qualified denial: “I really can’t remember that. As this person indicated, he was closeted. I had no idea that he was gay and can’t speak to that even today.” So I didn’t do it, and anyway, the guy was closeted.

Oh, well, that’s alright, then. See, I was afraid you were covering up your own latent homosexual urges by abusing gay guys. But, of course, they were closeted (as they’d have to be with assholes like you around), so you didn’t know they were gay (chuckle) because that was the furthest thing from your mind (chuckle). In other words, Governor, your criminality wasn’t because you were a bigot, but rather because you were a pedestrian bully and garden-variety sociopath. I’m glad you explained; I feel so much better now.

There’s a telling link from the Post story. In the sentence “Romney’s presidential campaign has turned to the candidate’s youthful antics as evidence of his capacity for harmless, humanizing pranks and as an indication of his looser, less wooden self,” there’s a link to another article, published last month. Here’s one of the “harmless, humanizing pranks” of college-aged Romney: “At Stanford, he lured rival University of California students into a trap in which his buddies “shaved their heads and painted them red,” according to a 1970 speech at Brigham Young University by his father, George Romney.

“Yuck yuck yuck. My kid committed multiple counts of assault on people just because they didn’t go to the same school as he did. HA!” Uh, George, that little anecdote didn’t help your boy overcome the widely-held perception that he’s disingenuous in all things, that he believes his wealth entitles him to commit literally criminal acts without repercussions, and that beneath the plastic smirk and the $1200 suits, the core characteristic is viciousness. And, by the way, what’s with Mitt’s hair-cutting fetish? Might he have an alter ego as M. Jacques of Cheveux Sont Nous?

It would be an exaggeration (a term I employ advisedly) to suggest that I don’t care at all what Mitt Romney did in the 1960’s. But it isn’t relevant to whether he’s a good candidate today. Except that, sort of, it is. 2012 Romney’s blithe dismissal of 1960s Romney’s “pranks” is troubling because he’s so obviously lying about it. But it could be worse: he could actually not remember these random acts of brutality, not understand their immorality, or not regard anyone even the slightest bit different from himself to be worthy of compassion. I like the mendacious jackass better than the amoral psychopath. Luckily, Governor Romney has fabricated about everything else he’s said in this entire campaign. We can take comfort in the virtual certainty that he’s simply a pathological liar and not something far worse.