richms: Or they are doing the 95% by volume or something?

John2010:
Well, seeing as you are seeking what you regard as perfection, from me in the clarity of my posts, may I, in turn, suggest that you work on improving your grammar and punctuation?

John2010:

NonprayingMantis: I always thought there was a margin of error allowed for in these kind of labels, like with weights.

a bag that states 1kg of potatoes can have + or - x% since it is virtually impossible to get a perfect measure every time.

You are showing some good sense :-).

For the Nutritional Information Panel the requirement is that the quantity is an "average".

"Average" can be determined by the manufacturer's analysis, calculation from the average or actual quantity of the nutrient or calculation from data that is generally accepted. As far as I know there is no other guidance as to the statistics such as standard deviation.

gzt:

For ingredients comprising 5% or more, rounding is to 1%; for ingredients less than 5% rounding is to 0.5%, that rounding being applied to the average which we all, well some of us anyway :-), know is itself subject to deviation.

So in the case of a claim of 5% for an ingredient, the actual can be more than 1% different and, of course, vary from pack to pack.

sbiddle: While "average" can make this acceptable, the reason the issue is occuring is pure laziness on behalf of the store. Having been responsible for ensuring this very issue didn't occur in a past life I can tell you exactly why it occurs.

Stores have a PLU list of products that are loaded into their scales. Rather than using a specific PLU for this product the store has simply used a generic "95% fat free" PLU number for these sausages.

mattwnz:

sbiddle: While "average" can make this acceptable, the reason the issue is occuring is pure laziness on behalf of the store. Having been responsible for ensuring this very issue didn't occur in a past life I can tell you exactly why it occurs.

Stores have a PLU list of products that are loaded into their scales. Rather than using a specific PLU for this product the store has simply used a generic "95% fat free" PLU number for these sausages.

If you saw Campbell live last night, you will see that these companies make a lot of money in NZ, and out food is a lot more expensive that in the UK, even though we produce a lot of it. So they are making plenty of money to not have these sorts of problems. From my experience, complaining to the staff in store has been a waste of time.

mattwnz: 

If you saw Campbell live last night, you will see that these companies make a lot of money in NZ, and out food is a lot more expensive that in the UK, even though we produce a lot of it. So they are making plenty of money to not have these sorts of problems. From my experience, complaining to the staff in store has been a waste of time.

richms: High minimum wages are possibly part of the reason for the high prices, but in the case of NZ goods going offshore they still are paying those high prices thru all the production and packing in NZ, its just the local distributors, and supermarkets that are suffering the high wages and energy costs in NZ.

If they can put other things thru their supply chains and still be quite reasonably priced, there is no excuse for NZ grown primary products for being the prices that they are other than someone somewhere along the chain making a killing. I dont blame the supermarkets, I expect that the pilaging is furthur up the chain.