Environmental health visit

[Hebeegeebee]

Tip of the day.
One way of checking your weights for free is to take a jar to the post office and use their calibrated scales on the counter and then decide not to post it.

Fine unless you have a miserable bat behind the glass or you do it on pension day.

 

[alanf]

Nowadays, therefore, honey may be sold in just about any quantity (by weight), but the jars must be labelled correctly.

Good to have that confirmed by a Trading Standards professional, thanks.

I had written before that I knew trading in standard quantities has been a legal requirement for a long time but had been abolished. It's a requirement that many who have been bottling honey for years still believe applies and I've had quoted to be before (wrongly). I found this on a local Trading Standards website (http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/brent&harrow/history.htm)

Apart from the systems of weights and measures the area of trading standards work with the longest history of regulation has been the composition and sale of food and drink.

The Assize of Bread and Ale of 1266 regulated the weight of the Farthing Loaf, and the quantity of a Penny of Ale according to the price of the ingredients. Bakers or Brewers who gave short measure could be fined, put in the pillory or flogged.

Over the following centuries, further legislation was enacted covering the selling of a wide variety of foodstuffs such as wine, cheese, fish, salt and tea. These acts covered the quantities products were to be sold in, and the measures to be used. Further acts covered the checking of equipment and weights used in trade transactions.

Legislation was also passed to ensure the quality of foodstuffs and outlaw adulteration. Unscrupulous producers and traders would add sawdust to bread dough, grease to coffee and even sulphuric acid to vinegar. Where adulteration resulted in widespread serious illness or even death the tradesmen could be executed.

By the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, mill owners were complaining their workers were performing badly due to the poor quality, adulterated food. This again led to legislation being passed throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries.

In a way it is a loss of an historical link in that selling in prescribed measures goes back to at least 1266 in England (references elsewhere of a King John assize of 1203). The big advantage was always that if you scanned a shop shelf the uniform pound jars meant you could easily compare price for a set quantity. My last check of a supermarket shelf showed that most commercial packers had decided a 340g jar (12oz) was "standard" and there were no pound or 454g jars to be seen. There is nothing to stop some packer designing a superficially similar jar to the existing 12oz ones but slightly thinner and packing 300g. Or 280g. Or whatever they decide will not be noticed by the customers. It's a trick (deception?) that has been used by several major food producers in the recent past: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...g-Mars-bar-Size-cut-7-2-price-stays-same.html

 

[MandF]

12oz hex jars look approximately the same size as a 1lb jar. Most consumers think they are the same when browsing and comparing prices at fayres (sic), farm shops and the like.

When i was at last years honey festival I had to tell people that my 1lb jars (selling for £6) were better value than the predominant 12oz jars (selling for £5). Because most people thought they were the same, just different shapes.