Uniform package weight

[Carol Anne]

How do packers manage to produce packages of uniform weight such as chicken legs in 400g packs etc.?

[Mortartube]

Apparently, there are extremely accurate weighing machines. The chicken legs travel on a carousel (similar to a luggage carousel at an airport). lets say 3 chicken legs amounting to 320 grams have been packed in a tray, the machine will wait until one of 80g comes along and an arm will push it into the pack to bring it up to the full 400g weight. This all happens on such a large scale that an 80g chicken leg will usually come along pretty rapidly, as the chickens used for this kind of thing are slaughtered at a specified weight, so everything is around the same size and weight..

[Carol Anne]

The packs are always accurate, I've weighed quite a few now. I always thought that the 'e' mark (it's not on packs of chicken by the way) was some kind of EC certification of absolute accuracy!

[xrayspecs]

e marking actually means that the packs in the batch fall within the guidelines of the weights and measures act which states no pack weight should fall under T2 and only a predetermined percentage fall between T1 and T2. The greater percentage of packs will fall within Nominal weight and T1.

[qapmoc]

Most foods are average weight because it is almost impossible to get the pack weight exactly 400gm for items which are individual such as chicken legs or biscuits etc..., they are also averaged over a defined period and the checkweighers are set up to react to this. This means that if all the packs are averaging light weight then a pack of say 385 grams will be rejected but later in the day if all the packs are averaging high weight a 385 grams pack will be accepted.