Has one of the world’s biggest pasta makers been under filling its boxes? (Barilla Group)
One of the world’s leading pasta company has landed in hot water with some of its customers, who are accusing it of cheating them out of their beloved carbs by under-filling its boxes by as much as 25 percent.
Four New York consumers say that the Barilla corporation is using deceptive packaging to fool consumers into thinking they are getting more pasta then they really are in the food makers specialty lines, according to a suit filed in Brooklyn. Barilla is allegedly putting their extra-protein, whole-grain and gluten-free pastas into the same-sized blue boxes that they use for their regular enriched macaroni, even though the boxes are filled with significantly fewer noodles.
Barilla relies on consumers familiarity with the box size and appearance, known due to decades of marketing, to mislead consumers into thinking they are purchasing the same quantity of pasta when, in reality, the company is filling the boxes with materially less pasta, the lawsuit says.
The New York-based customers complain that they are getting 9.4-percent less in boxes of Protein Plus pasta, 17.4-percent less in their whole-grain pasta and 25 percent less in their gluten-free pasta.
The new reduced net weight of the pasta is indicated on the box, the suit notes, but customers are otherwise uninformed that theres been a change in the quantity of product or that the boxes are substantially under-filled.
Plaintiffs Alessandro Berni of The Bronx, Domenico Salvata and Mossimo Simioli of Brooklyn and Giuseppe Santochirico of Queens are suing for unspecified damages.
All four claim they were overcharged and suffered out-of-pocket loss after buying various boxes of Barilla this year that were under-filled.
Barillas deceptive practice … is known as slack-fill, the suit says. By misleading consumers in this manner, Barilla is able to capitalize on the market … while preserving and/or increasing its margins. A rep for Barilla didnt return a message.
Barilla, which is based in Parma, Italy, produces about 25 percent of all pasta sold in the U.S.
The lawsuit is seeking class-action status as well as compensatory and punitive damages, and legal fees on the plantiffs’ behalf.
