Northern Irish bakery Irwin’s, has been fined £1,500 for selling underweight bread, after launching a 600g loaf ahead of next year’s EU directive that lifts historical UK bread weights.

The underweight loaves were found during a routine weight check by a Trading Standards officer in a supermarket in April. Thirty-eight out of 51 loaves from two lines contained less than the 600g marked weight - in some cases the bread was more than 10% lighter than it should have been. A follow-up visit to the bakery revealed that no checks were in place to ensure the weight levels were correct.

Irwin’s commercial controller Michael Murphy said: "We were in the early stages of producing limited runs of a new product, which contained grains and seeds. During the baking process, these ingredients unfor- tunately incurred more weight loss than was expected, causing the end product to be underweight. We have increased the weight of ingredients for the specific products."

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