CBC investigation finds grocers Loblaw, Sobeys overcharging for underweight meat — again

A CBC News secret shopping investigation has uncovered — once again — several Loblaw-owned and Sobeys-affiliated stores overcharging for underweight meat, despite claims last year the grocery giants had taken steps to rectify the problem.

“People are getting ripped off,” said Terri Lee, a former inspector with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). Lee, who spent 24 years with the federal food regulator before retiring in 2021, estimates misweighed meat costs Canadian shoppers millions of dollars annually.

“Obviously, these retail stores are not to be trusted that the weight on the package is accurate,” she said.

Over the past two months, CBC visited 17 Loblaw-owned or Sobeys-affiliated stores in the Toronto, Vancouver and Halifax areas, targeting packaged fresh meat sold by weight. 

Using a kitchen scale, CBC first secretly weighed meats in stores in their full packaging. When a product’s scale weight matched or fell below the net weight declared on its label, that indicated the meat was underweight — likely because it was weighed and priced with the packaging included.

Under federal regulations, the posted net weights for food — and prices based on that weight —  must exclude the weight of the packaging.

In all, CBC purchased and documented 32 underweight meat products from seven stores: two Safeways and a Thrifty Foods in North Vancouver (owned by Sobeys); two Farm Boys in the Greater Toronto Area (owned by Sobeys’ parent company, Empire); and two Real Canadian Superstores in the Halifax area (owned by Loblaw).

Calculated overcharges ranged from two to 16.7 per cent. Organic air-chilled chicken sold at Farm Boy ran up the highest added costs: an extra $1.35 (16.7 per cent) on a pack of two breasts sold for $9.42, and an added $1.37 (12.5 per cent) on a pack of five thighs for $12.32.

The findings come at a time of growing frustration over the high cost of food: grocery prices have climbed 30 per cent since 2021.

“Food prices have gone astronomically high,” said Karen Webber who twice over the past year bought underweight beef brisket at a Loblaw-owned Real Canadian Superstore in Dartmouth, N.S. 

Grocers, she said, “can’t be making extra money off of packaging. That’s just wrong.”

One year ago, a similar CBC probe discovered several other Loblaw and Sobeys-owned stores selling underweight meat — which appeared to have been weighed and priced with the packaging.

In response to that investigation, Loblaw and Sobeys told CBC they had reinforced their meat-weighing policies and procedures. 

In addition, the CFIA stepped up its unannounced meat weight spot checks, and has so far issued warnings but no fines, to seven retailers for violations. Offenders include a Real Canadian Superstore in B.C. that sold underweight beef strip loin. 

Lee says the CFIA needs to further ramp up spot checks, and dole out big fines to big grocers that consistently misweigh meat. 

“They need to be out protecting the consumer from food fraud,” she said. “We’re still seeing it’s rampant.”

As part of the new investigation, CBC pursued a tip from Webber, a retired high school principal who lives just outside Dartmouth.

In February 2025, Webber bought four beef briskets at her local Real Canadian Superstore and discovered they were underweight. She said she returned to the store and informed a manager, who gave her a free brisket and promised to fix the problem.

However, one year later, Webber bought four more beef briskets at the same Superstore and was shocked to discover they, too, were underweight.

“I was pissed, she said. “They were obviously just paying lip service to me [last year] and they didn’t change anything.” 

CBC purchased three beef briskets from the same store as Webber, and three more from another Superstore in downtown Halifax. All six were underweight, and it appeared that the meat had been incorrectly weighed with Superstore packaging. The calculated overcharge for the six briskets combined was almost $4 (4.7 per cent).

Webber estimates Superstore could have made thousands of dollars extra over the year by charging customers for the beef brisket packaging. 

“You’re only supposed to charge people for what they can actually eat,” she said. 

In an email, Loblaw said the problem was limited to one product at a “small number” of stores, and that it has since reviewed protocols with staff.

“We are truly sorry this happened,” said Canada’s largest grocer. “We take weight accuracy seriously.”

Webber says she’s glad her local Superstore corrected the brisket weights after CBC got involved, but wishes the store had fixed the problem when she first flagged it last year. 

“I am incredibly disappointed that it took CBC to change this instead of me as a consumer.”

Out West, at the two Safeways and Thrifty Foods, each owned by Sobeys, CBC found multiple packages of underweight poultry.

In each instance, the meat appeared to have been weighed and priced with the packaging included.

Thrifty Foods saw the most significant price discrepancies: four out of the six organic chicken packs tested had calculated overcharges of just over $1, representing an added cost of up to 9.8 per cent.

CBC also found underweight organic chicken at the two GTA locations of Farm Boy, owned by Sobeys’ parent company Empire. Most notably, eight of nine packages tested weighed less than their labels claimed — even with the packaging included in the total.

Consequently, Farm Boy yielded the highest overcharges in the investigation.

Karen White-Boswell, spokesperson for Sobeys and Empire, did not dispute CBC’s findings, but did not address them directly. 

“On occasion when errors occur, we investigate the issue so that it can be corrected,” she said in an email. 

Regarding Farm Boy, she said the chain is supplied by a third party and that “these products are packaged and weighed at a CFIA-certified facility.”

However, the CFIA told CBC News it does not certify facilities, and that the onus is on all companies involved in the supply chain to comply with federal regulations. The agency added that it should be alerted if businesses are supplying retailers with inaccurately weighed food.

Grocery stores overcharge for meat by including package weight

Following public outcry generated by CBC’s first report on misweighed meat in January 2025, the CFIA says it ramped up inspections. 

After conducting just six meat product spot checks at stores in the 2023-2024 fiscal year, the agency said it has tested 236 since January 2025.

Despite the increased enforcement, the CFIA has issued only warnings to offenders. The B.C. Real Canadian Superstore, which sold underweight strip loin, got a warning — no fine — even though the chain has faced CFIA scrutiny before. In early 2024, an agency investigation determined Superstores across Western Canada had sold underweight ground beef. 

Lee, the retired CFIA inspector, says grocers that repeatedly break the rules should face financial penalties. But she argues the current maximum fine, $15,000 for such violations, isn’t high enough for major supermarket chains. 

“It’s nothing. It’s their cost of doing business,” Lee said. “It needs to be enough so that it deters them — half a million dollars.”

The CFIA told CBC News it’s committed to protecting Canadians, takes action whenever misweighed meat is discovered, and says that its enforcement strategy continues to evolve.

The agency said in an email that its penalties are “proportionate to the risk and the seriousness” of the offence. It added that fines are just one of the tools it uses to enforce the rules. Other measures include education, business licence suspension or cancellation, or referral for prosecution.

The CFIA also noted that the federal government is reviewing fine limits to ensure they’re effective, and expects to announce the outcome in its 2026 budget.

As for Webber, after her repeated experience with misweighed beef, she says she’s taking matters into her own hands. 

“I’m going to keep weighing everything.”

The CFIA encourages shoppers who discover misweighed food to file a complaint with the agency.