Are there any rules or laws around the weight of pre packaged fresh food? (Fruit and vegetables, meat and cheese etc). Is it true as claimed in the following news article that some parts of the packaging is allowed to be included in the items weight?
https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/woolies-shop…
Here is a link to the some of the rules
https://www.industry.gov.au/data-and-publications/guide-to-t…
I think the more grey area is whether meat juices that soak into the pad count as "product", especially if it was still in and part of the meat when it was packed.
Yes, in the same way cherry/grape stalks, banana stems etc are weighed along with the produce.
I'd take that story with a grain of salt (pun not intended)
Oh, and feel free to look at the other whinge posts by all the Karens
My guess is product was weighed originally at outlet area, product is largely meat and liquid. Large amount of liquid soaked into the soak pads over time (or evaporate) and thus meat weight is less. Its interesting as if this was an enclosed item, soda for example I'd expect everything in there to make up the volume (I think they do a statistical analysis, so the SD is like 99.98% or something). But I don't know about something like this, maybe you could look at the concentration of meat to total ratio.
As I understand that there will be loss of produce, but near half is a lot.
Should be easy to measure:
Weigh entire packet with packaging,
Weigh plastic packaging only (maybe including dried soak pad),
??? (actually just maths)
Profit!
Wait what were we talking about again?
What you say makes a lot of sense, but I suspect thats what is basically happening now.
My assumption is that lady bought mince meat which is a mix of meat and liquid which weighed 500g and worked out as you described. The liquid largely evaporates or gets soaked into the soak pad leading to a smaller weight of 260g. Lady is unhappy that she only has 260g of meat now.
This opens up an interesting aspect, essentially what makes up the mince meat, or anything of that aspect. For example could you soak your meat in a lot of water and sell it at a larger weight. Is there an appropriate amount of liquid allowed? If you imagine a large company that sells billions of dollars worth of meat, would you save millions by adding water.
I think it would be whatever water weight is already in the meat. You can't drain the meat/pat dry and weigh it either on the other side.
There is a hell of a lot more to this story. Note the photo supplied in the article is far from definitive.
I would be willing to wager that this is either a very unusual packaging error (the proverbial 1 in a million case) or the article doesn't quite provide the whole truth.
Thats what my first thought was when I read it too. The picture needs to clearly show the whole item, not a zoomed in area
And you'd feel the difference in weight, as other commenters have pointed out, especially if she's "been buying it for years" as she says
You do not pay for packaging weight, ever.
Even in a multipack like small packs of chips, if you buy 10x25g of chips, you'll get 250g of chips.
Convenient that’s she weighed it out of the packaging
I call BS on this one. If she wanted to prove her point she should of weighed the whole thing. Yeah it would of been more than the 260 or so grams even with packaging it would of been far less than 500g
Should have. Would have.
Meh !
I try not to buy prepackaged meat. There is a lot of wasted packaging and you don't know how long it has been sitting out there. I go to the butcher, at the market, and order it from there. Most of my meat goes into the freezer before I use it.
So you buy fresh meat, then freeze, then thaw to cook? Why?
Because I, generally, buy more than I need in one go.
@[Deactivated]: As long as you don’t leave it too long it is fine. Best to defrost in the fridge overnight.
Net weight is different to gross weight.
I thought most packaging specifies grams "NET"?
I'm a bit confused by this one. How do you not notice when you pick it up that it weighs nearly half of what it should? Or that there's clearly a huge chunk of meat missing from the packet? I buy these minces all the time for convenience, and the difference between 500g vs 262g would be instantly obvious
If you are worried can always weigh it in the shop (eg fresh veg and fruit usually has scales)
ALDI doesn't have one. I guess you just have to "trust" them.
Don't their checkouts have them for weighing fruit/vegies?
At the checkout, yes.
But are you really going to ask the cashier to stop scanning and to weigh your veggies and get lynched by people waiting in the line?
I would never do it.
@Blue Cat: Where available we always use the self checkouts. They are a bit of a pain though, because they are so cramped and you have to leave everything on the "bagging area" until everything has been put through.
I think the article has been updated to include some additional comment from the customer.
I remember this subject arising some time ago,the retailers had to weigh the container first and reset it back to zero then add the the container to the scales and the shown weight is that of the contents only,
when you concider the weight of the container may be quite small,concider that the major stores may sell hundred of thousands of these items daily from their thousands of stores it just goes into extra profit to the retailers bank,
So confused. There are two weights to look at on all containers they are gross and net weight a steel can will have a gross weight which means total weight of everything, and net weight which means everything within that container learning something new is great.!!!!!!!!
Unless the laws have changed, in my previous jobs where I worked in food production (packing in an beef abattoir) and retail (supermarket deli), ALL packaging materials are tared from the weight of the product. You don't pay for the weight of the package, just the weight of the product inside them. In the supermarket we'd get random weights and measures checks and we'd do regular checks on all scales to ensure they were reading correctly.
I also often buy the 500g packs of mince to make burgers for a quick and easy dinner. I get out the scales and weigh out 125g for 4 burgers and I've always found it to be slightly over 500g, if not bang on - but never under!
Also I notice in that article about the woman being short changed on her mince, there are so many things that make it seem so wrong! What monster puts raw meat directly on their scales? Tare a plate lady and put it on that! You also can't see the whole portion of meat, as well as it's right at the front of the scales so probably not even weighing correctly…
An update with a follow up article;
https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/sneaky-symbo…
It seems that the "e" symbols on pre packaged meat allows companies to 'estimate' and average out the amount of meat in the packets over a batch.
Ugh, "follow up" article is 90% just rehashing the original article
It’s illegal for charge for packaging by including it in the weight of an item. Even salad tubs and produce bags at supermarkets are supposed to be subject to tare at the point of sale. There are people from the Australian bureau of measurement who randomly inspect this.
I have no problem paying bit extra for the packaging but you absolutely should get 500g of product if it states 500g.