CBC investigation uncovers grocers overcharging customers by selling underweighted meat

The Loblaw grocery chain overcharged customers by selling underweighted meat across 80 stores for an undisclosed period that ended in December 2023, a CBC News investigation has found.

On top of that, over the past few months, CBC News visited seven major grocery stores in three different provinces and discovered packages of underweighted meat in four of them: two Loblaw stores and one Sobeys-owned location, plus a Walmart. Calculated overcharges per item ranged from four to 11 per cent.

The findings suggest grocers selling underweighted meat is a prevalent and ongoing problem, at a time when shoppers are struggling with high food prices that began rising during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"When you're seeing that they're not weighing meat product properly ... there's an extra hit there that the consumer is taking," said Iris Griffin, a shopper who blew the whistle on the 80-store Loblaw case.

In late November 2023, Griffin, who lives on Hecla Island in Manitoba's Lake Winnipeg, bought a package of ground beef at a Loblaw-owned Superstore in Winnipeg.

The beef's label stated that its net weight was 1.834 kilograms. But when Griffin weighed the meat in order to freeze equal portions, she said it turned out to be 1.7 kg — 134 grams short.

She said the weight of the beef's hard plastic tray made up for the missing weight, so she figures the meat had been incorrectly weighed with the packaging.

"I was angry," said Griffin, who calculated she'd been overcharged $1.27 (7.9 per cent) on the $17.35 price tag. "I'm being charged for this piece of plastic at the price of the ground beef."

Under federal regulations, posted net weights for packaged food — and prices based on that weight —  can't include the packaging.

Worried the problem could be widespread, Griffin complained to the federal food regulator, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), which alerted Loblaw. 

Loblaw Companies Ltd. spokesperson Catherine Thomas said in an email that due to an error involving a change in packaging, the grocer sold "a small number" of underweighted meat products in 80 stores across Western Canada.

She didn't address questions about when the problem started and how much customers were overcharged.

"We have robust internal processes and controls in place; however, they are subject to the occasional operational error," Thomas said. "Even though 97 per cent of our [2,400] stores were unaffected, any pricing issue that results in an overcharge is one too many."

The CFIA said it didn't visit any Loblaw stores during its investigation into the matter or issue any fines because the grocer reported it had fixed the problem.