I was a little taken aback when i saw the breathless headline from one of our competitors:
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Short weight, or selling seafood products at less than 100% net weight, is a serious problem in the industry, and is also a big problem in frozen shrimp. By saying Cosco was routinely selling short-weighted shrimp, the headline was making a hugely serious allegation - on the order of saying something like "Top Bank regulator accused of taking bribes." it's a charge that undermines the entire credibility of a chain like Costco, or any large consumer retailer in the eyes of the trade.
So imagine my surprise when I looked into the "breaking" news, and found it wasn't true. Instead a crack-pot lawyer had filed a class action suit because he thought the fixed weight label on a processed shrimp ring was suspect, and he might convince a jury- who knows little about packaging, that the Costco label in question was in fact a statement about net weight that was false.
The product was a store level party platter with shrimp, lemon wedges, cocktail sauce and lettuce - and yet the headline would have you believe that somehow Costco was selling short weight bags of shrimp - likely its number one selling seafood item.
This is a stupid kind of journalism - that doesn't stop to analyze the facts before rushing out the sensational headline. This certainly did not deserve the title "breaking news."
Our story on this is below.
SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by
John Sackton - March 13, 2009 - At a time when 100% net weight is a
huge issue in the frozen seafood industry, any headline that Costco was
being sued for selling short-weight shrimp is bound to gather attention.
But in this case, there is a lot less here than meets the eye.
First,
the product involved is not a packaged product, but a store-level party
platter, packed by store employees with cooked, defrosted, 31-35
shrimp. The shrimp are placed in a ring - similar rings are sold in
practically every retail chain - with a piece of garnish and a
container of cocktail sauce in the center.
In this case, a New
Yorker, Marc Verzani, noticed that when he weighed the amount of shrimp
in his shrimp tray, it came out to be less than the net weight of 16
oz. advertised on the label. The shrimp weighed between 13 and 14
ounces. He didn't say if he weighed the other ingredients in the
package he bought.
Instead of going back to the store and complaining, he went to a lawyer - who immediately smelled a payoff.
Arguing
that the net weight has to refer to the shrimp only, and not the entire
contents - which include cocktail sauce and lettuce, the lawyer filed a
class action suit saying that nationally, Costco sells between 500 and
1000 shrimp trays per week at its 410 stores.
He is seeking
damages based on a two ounce short weighting of 10,660,000 shrimp
trays, or between $10.4 million and $40 million, depending on actual
sales.
The suit seeks to force Costco (and presumably other retailers) to use random weight labeling for their shrimp trays.
In
this case, it appears that the lawyer is trying to hold up Costco,
which has a reputation it must protect, by tarnishing it with an
accusation of short weight on shrimp, despite the fact that the
accusation has nothing to do with the actual issue of short weights.
His
case would be more convincing if he had sampled 16 oz bags of frozen
shrimp. There, by law, the retailer has to sell at 100% net weight, and
if it is short, should suffer enforcement and sanctions. But the fact
he brought this action over a shrimp tray with multiple ingredients is
simply silly. It is the type of action that gives class action lawyers
a bad name.
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