The Business Ethics Blog

I was asked recently to comment on this story, about two major Canadian grocery chains (Loblaw & Sobeys) that were found to have been (at least sometimes) “overcharging for underweight meat.” (Here’s the link to the radio interview — my comments start at about the 5 and a half minute mark.)

A few points are worth noting about this case. One is that the investigation in question — at least as reported — is somewhat inconclusive. Or at least it tells us less than we would like to know. The investigation revealed that there were instances of overcharging, but we don’t know the frequency. And we can’t know that without knowing how many pieces of meat the reporters weighed that did not turn out to be underweight. But anyway, we have evidence that overcharging is happening at these chains, even if we don’t know how often.

Now for the ethical issues. A smart colleague, when told about this case, pointed out that the ethical issues here are not exactly complex: overcharging for underweight meat is clearly wrong, on the face of it. And that’s true. Honesty in weights and measures is one of the most fundamental, and one of the oldest, requirements for the ethical conduct of business. If I ask you to sell me a pound of beef, and if you agree to do so, you’re ethically required to sell me an actual pound of beef — not 90% of that.

It’s also worth noting that this is not a subject where we can expect “buyer beware” to be a plausible standard – it’s not realistic to think that the average consumer is going to carry a scale with them when shopping, and so consumers need to be able to trust the store.

(The devil’s advocate in me wants to ask: if I’m buying a roast for my family, and the roast I buy looks big enough, does it really matter if it’s 3 pounds, or merely 2.8? My family still gets fed. But there’s a lingering concern, at very least, about comparison shopping: if I buy at your store because of the price you charge per pound of beef, but you are only able to advertise that price because you know — let’s imaging — that you’re going to skim some extra profit by mislabeling the weight of the roast, then I’m being misled in a meaningful way.)

Of course, there’s such a thing as blameless errors. In any large system (say, like a chain of 1,500 grocery stores) there are bound to be a few errors, a few scales that are out of whack. So we don’t need to jump to the conclusion that there is intentional fraud or other wrongdoing here. But that doesn’t mean there’s no blame here, either. For one, there’s such a thing as culpable negligence. If a store (or a chain of stores) doesn’t do enough to make sure its meat scales are in good shape, and well-calibrated, when they’ve got the expertise to do so, that’s blameworthy in itself. And beyond that, we are talking not just about what kind of diligence might be expected of a reasonable person — or a reasonable retailer. It matters here that the chains in question are large, well-managed organizations — the kinds of organizations that should be able to be relied upon to get this stuff right.