I bought 175 g pack of salami which had 162 g of salami as well.
The FDA regulation on Net Weight is found in 21 CFR 101.105. In this regulation FDA makes allowance for reasonable variations caused by loss or gain of moisture during the course of good distribution practice or by unavoidable deviations in good manufacturing practice. FDA states that variations from the stated quantity of contents should not be unreasonably large.
While FDA does not provide a specific allowable tolerance for Net Weight, this matter could come under FTC jurisdiction. FTC has proposed regulations that would unify USDA and FDA Net Contents labeling and incorporate information found in the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) Handbook 133.
NIST Handbook 133 specifies that the average net quantity of contents in a lot must at least equal the net quantity declared on the label. Plus or minus deviation is permitted when caused by unavoidable variation in weighing and measuring that occur in good manufacturing practice. The maximum allowable variance for a package with a net weight declaration of 5 oz is 5/16 oz. Packages under-filled by more than this amount are considered non-compliant.
In the nineties, 4oz ground pepper cans made on a line I worked on.
The tolerances were horrible.
McCormick was 3.9 I think
Black and white can 3.5. !!! (25%)
Yes both were made on the same exact line
5/16 oz
How many football fields to the gallon is that? On a serious note this is something far better expressed as a fraction than an amount of difference for one specific container size…
It’s not really clear whether the variance scales linearly with weight. We only know 1 data point. It could be bracketed for different weight groups.
The FDA is probably not operating in what I can only assume is Canada from the Eng/Fra and grams usage.
But I’m sure they have something to allow for fluctuations in weight, would rather it be mandated as a minimum allowing for a bit of extra weight to over compensate however.
A lot of American stuff has English French and Spanish so it can cover the whole continent basically
The maximum allowable variance for a package with a net weight declaration of 5 oz is 5/16 oz.
oddly, that’s just over 8g, the difference noted in OP’s example. so, OP’s package is within he allowable tolerance, just.
And it would probably be more expensive to get precision-calibrated equipment to get you at the bottom end of the tolerance to save product cost than what it would cost to just aim for the correct value with less precise equipment.
This one is a conspiracy theory I struggle to get behind. It seems like the conspiracy would be less profitable than the “proper” behavior here.
You know full well that they did some statistical analysis and determined the minimum possible amount of pasta that they could try to put in that box, taking into account variations in their machinery and moisture content.
Thank you! I don’t get why they use such weird measurements. Why not use %?
