FOOD LION SETTLES SHORT-WEIGHT CLAIMS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 2, 1993                   TAG: 9304020231
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DOVER, DEL.                                LENGTH: Short
FOOD LION SETTLES SHORT-WEIGHT CLAIMS
The Food Lion supermarket chain did not try to cheat consumers when it allegedly sold food that weighed less than what was marked on the package in its Delaware stores, a spokesman said.
The Salisbury, N.C., chain blamed weighing problems and denied knowingly selling food that did not correspond to the weight label.
The company agreed to pay $10,000 to the state Consumer Protection Fund and to donate $50,000 in cash or food to the Food Bank of Delaware for the violation.
Mike Mozingo, Food Lion spokesman, said a breakdown in communications for four years between store managers in Delaware and store officials in North Carolina prevented the company from correcting the weighing problems.
Donald Williams, director of the state Division of Consumer Affairs, said the settlement was a way to repay consumers who might have shopped at Food Lion's six stores in Sussex County, Del., because the state could not determine who might have been cheated.
Mozingo said Food Lion has not had similar problems in the other 13 states where it operates.
Officials alleged that over four years beginning in 1988, about 19 percent of the 10,569 packages of meat, poultry, produce and deli foods, including salads, that were inspected weighed less than the weight on the package label.
More than 800 packages weighed a quarter of an ounce less than the weight on the label. The most extreme cases were two hams that were off by 8 pounds, a weights and measures official said.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB