South Australia’s Office of Consumer and Business Affairs (OCBA) unveiled on Wednesday that nearly half of the 102 packaged seafood products it evaluated as part of an investigation were underweight.
OCBA inspectors purchased a variety of seafood products — including prawns, squid, fish fillets, fish cakes and fish fingers — from supermarkets and fishmongers to ensure they weren’t short-weighting product by including the weight of the ice glazing.
Of the 102 seafood products they tested, 46 were underweight — one package of Atlantic salmon and 45 packages of prawns.
“Seafood lovers have every right to be disappointed with these results,” said Consumer Affairs Minister Gail Gago. “Consumers think they’re paying for a certain quantity of seafood, but in actual fact they’re getting less for their money.”
The average difference between the actual weight of the product and labeled weight of the product was 2 percent. One 1-kilogram package of prawns was nearly 100 grams underweight. All the packaged prawns came from local fishmongers who had sourced the product from the same South Australian wholesaler, which the OCBA did not identify.
The retailers caught selling underweight seafood products were issued warnings and have stopped selling the products. Gago said the OCBA won’t be as lenient if the retailers are busted again.
“It is important that these problems are addressed now as seafood sales will likely increase as we get closer to Christmas,” said Gago.
