Grocery giant Loblaws has issued an apology after reports some of its stores were selling underweight meat, a year after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) first dealt with the matter.
The selling of underweight meat was first reported in 2023 by Winnipeg Lake resident Iris Griffin, who noticed a difference between the store package weight and how much meat she received. That led to a complaint to the CFIA.
Griffin told The Epoch Times that she was portioning the meat when she first found the discrepancy.
”I took the weight on the label, and I divided it by four. And I was like, ‘Okay, this is my target for each of these portions’. And then I got to the last portion, I thought, I’m 134 grams short.”
When she weighed the plastic packaging, it weighed 134 grams.
A spokesperson from Loblaws said there had been a small number of underweighted meat products sold in 80 stores across Western Canada, according to the CBC. The spokesperson said it was due to an error in a change of packaging and the practice was said to have ended in December 2023.
However, CBC said four of seven stores it checked in recent months were still selling underweight meat.
The Loblaws spokesperson apologized and said the grocer has “refreshed our in-store training,” said CBC.
The CFIA told The Epoch Times in an email that it works to protect consumers and the food industry from misrepresentation.
“The CFIA took the appropriate action in every case where there was a mis-weighed product. In cases where there were errors in the declared net weight, implicated companies took corrective actions to address the cause of the error,” the email said. “If a food business was found to be non-compliant again, we would take this into consideration in determining further enforcement actions.”
CFIA Complaint
Griffin said in the phone interview she contacted the store she bought the meat from and was offered her money back.”I think it worked out to $1.27 out of my pocket, but it’s $1.27 out of everybody’s pocket that’s walking out of that store every day of the week for 52 weeks out of the year across maybe Western Canada.”
She said when she called the store, it confirmed that meat was not weighed without the packaging.
As a test, a friend of Griffin bought chicken and pork chops and weighed them at home, finding the packaging had been included in the price, just as Griffin had found with ground beef.
That was when Griffin made an online complaint to the CFIA.
”I got a message back from the CFIA, and they said that they had done their investigation and that there had been a program deviation that had been found, and Superstore was going to correct it.”
When she asked for a copy of the CFIA report, it was heavily redacted.
‘This Is Basic Stuff’
“This is basic stuff,“ she said. ”Everybody knows that you don’t include the weight of the package in the price of the product.”She called it “one more way that consumers are being hit by inflationary costs.”
Griffin said she isn’t sure what to make of Loblaw’s apology. “I think that the fact that they apologize is baloney, and they had to know how many of those packages have been sold.”
It’s not only a national issue, but a local one, she said. “And it’s a very personal issue.”
She believes it’s up to consumers to check on grocers, advising that people ask meat department employees to check the weight of meat before they buy it to see if the number on the scale is the same as is on the package.
“If the two numbers are the same, you’re paying for the price of the package. It’s that simple,” she said during the interview.
”We need to be paying attention to what it is we’re buying. We can’t just assume that they’re following the regulations.”
