Prosecutors began to fight against underfilling of milk in packages

Limited packaging of products will become lawless

Russians are no longer surprised if a liter bottle of milk contains 800 grams, and a bag of rice contains only 450 grams instead of half a kilo. Now there will be no 0.9 liter packages or bags of 0.48 kilograms of buckwheat on the shelves. Not just anyone, but the Prosecutor General’s Office banned manufacturers from packaging essential goods in containers of strange sizes.

Manipulations by sellers to reduce the weight of a product without changing the cost (and sometimes increasing the price) mislead ordinary people. Now, adjustments have been made to GOST regarding requirements for the quantity of packaged goods. Butter and sunflower oil, vermicelli, sugar, flour, rice, black tea, etc. everyday food will be packaged in the volumes familiar to Russians.

In recent years, we haven’t just bought goods at the store. Taking it off the retail shelf, we meticulously studied the information on the label: what does it say? Because the bottle of milk we bought yesterday may not be the same as the one we buy today.

In order not to upset customers with rising prices for products, manufacturers or sellers try not to raise them. But they quietly reduce the weight (mass) of the goods sold at the same price. This marketing technique is not a domestic invention at all. There is even a special foreign term for such underweight – shrinkflation, which means reduction and reduction. Milk and juices are sold in bottles of 0.8–0.9 liters, cereals in bags of 0.8 kilograms, pasta – 0.4 kg… And a standard pack of butter, which previously weighed strictly 250 grams, has been over the last 15 years “lost weight” to 180 grams. After a significant increase in the price of eggs a couple of years ago, standard packages often contain not the traditional dozen, but 8 or 9 pieces… Prices keep rising and rising, and the packages are getting smaller and smaller.

Not long ago, a new initiative was born in the State Duma: while maintaining the old order with price inflation, write two prices on the label: indicate the cost of the product in the volumes we are familiar with (liter and kilogram) and the cost of packaging. So that there is no deception of buyers. Formally correct, but essentially a mockery. We have to stand even longer at the sales shelf and read the information in small print. Everything ingenious is simple. Return, so to speak, to the roots, to traditional measures of weights and volumes. But how quickly can this happen?

Chairman of the Board of the Association of Market Retail Experts Andrei Karpov said that this issue remains open for now, since GOST itself is not mandatory for use. Manufacturers more often use technical specifications. “As for packaging and packaging, retail chains, as a rule, have nothing to do with it,” he said. — Manufacturers are responsible for it. If the product was ordered by retail chains, then yes, you need to look at who owns the product.”

Moreover, according to the coordinator of the public movement “For Honest Products” Alexander Brazhko, the period of unlimited trust on the part of the authorities in producers, processors and the retail network is coming to an end. “Their confidence that only these large structures can provide a minimum trade margin on a social set of products is not supported by practice. Unfortunately, neither the Federal Antimonopoly Service nor Rospotrebnadzor promptly stopped manipulations in the use of non-standard packaging.”

Justice, as they say, has triumphed. The fact that the country’s main supervisory authority has begun to deal with consumer protection suggests that it will bring the matter to completion and we will stop being deceived in the store. But it also indicates that the Prosecutor General’s Office simply replaced other structures, the same Rospotrebnadzor.

“When asked what packaging and packaging will remain on the market, Alexander Brazhko’s answer is simple and accessible: traditional volumes for Russians will be in demand – for different products and drinks this is 250 grams, half a liter, liter, half a kilogram and a kilogram.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29150 dated November 3, 2023

Newspaper headline:
Prosecutors against underfilling