Last summer, a very large US food retailer contacted the United States Potato Board (USPB) to ask us what we knew about the acceptability of selling bulk potatoes “by the each” as an alternative to the traditional method of selling by weight (i.e., by the pound). While the USPB is not authorized to, nor in any way provides legal counsel, in our efforts to be a good partner to the retail trade, we did offer to try putting this retailer in contact with other parties who were more qualified to provide this information.
The USPB reached out to our contact at USDA who looked into the subject and, in turn, put us in touch with someone in the Weights & Measures Division/Laws & Metric Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). As you probably know, NIST is an agency of the US Department of Commerce and annually publishes a document known as Handbook 130. Their 2012 edition runs a hefty 284 pages, and within a section titled “Uniform Regulation for the Method of Sale of Commodities, as adopted by The National Conference on Weights and Measures”, on page 236, is the following table:
To read the rest of the story, please go to: United States Potato Board
