Man goes to Dollar General. Then he picks up sack of 9Lives cat food—and issues a warning: ‘I had to go get my scale’

Consumers have been complaining about the advent of “shrinkflation” for years. But one man is going viral for actively hunting down and calling out the manufacturers of shrinkflation products.

Dean DiEmidio, who goes by the screen name James Wrigg, self-identifies as an “investigator” of “corporate fraud.” His social media accounts are chock-full of videos featuring him exposing various products for misleading labels about size or weight. Now he's vetting pet food.

‘You're not gonna believe what i found'

Content creator DiEmidio (@james_wrigg on TikTok) posted a video that has more than 645,000 views. In it, he called out Dollar General for selling what was supposed to be a 12-pound bag of 9Lives cat food.

“That ain't no 12 pounds,” DiEmidio said, showing the sack of 9Lives cat food to the camera. He then cut to footage of him walking through the aisles of a Dollar General, saying, “You're not gonna believe what I found. I had to go get my scale. Let's go weigh what I found.”

DiEmidio set up shop in the middle of the pet food aisle. He brandished the cat food toward the camera. He asked, “You want to see a scale problem with cat food? Look at this thing,” as he forcibly mashed the bag inward, demonstrating how much of the large bag was actually full of air rather than food.

Then, DiEmidio placed a scale on the Dollar General floor and panned his camera to the bottom right corner of the 9Lives bag, which listed itself as weighing “12 lbs.” But when he weighed the bag, there was a discrepancy.

The bag was only 6 pounds, 6.1 ounces. A second bag of cat food, this one manufactured by Purina, weighed the full 12 pounds, 12 ounces. But the 9Lives bag weighed half its listed weight.

“It's short six pounds in the bag,” DiEmidio said. “How does this get past scales, onto a pallet, delivered here off a pallet and on the shelf?”

‘Isn't this fraud?' 

The comments under DiEmidio's video expressed frustration with the discrepancy between the 9Lives cat food's listed weight and its actual weight.

“12lb bag, with almost 6 lbs missing,” wrote one viewer. “This is flipping ridiculous.”

“Thats like 4.5 lives worth,” wrote another person, while riffing on the brand's name.

“I'm wondering about Tylenol and vitamins and the like,” commented a third viewer. “I wonder if we're being shorted tablets.”

Some viewers called for legal and bureaucratic action to be taken, with one person even saying, “We need some class action lawsuits.”

“Have you seen any sort of official response to these?” a commenter asked. “Like besides oops we are terrible… like is any member of any govt body working on this?” DiEmidio replied, “No, absolutely not. Georgia.Weights and measures blew off the whole… scandal.”

More commenters questioned why this phenomenon “isn't illegal.” Some called “[the] entire system… a scam.”

“Isn't this fraud?” a viewer wondered.

Is shrinkflation legal?

There is some slight wiggle room in terms of the “maximum allowable variation” products can have regarding their actual weight versus the weight listed on their labels. However, the FDA mandates that all pet food labels are accurate and offer “proper identification of the product.” The American Pet Products Association (APPA) expands on these distinctions on its website.

“Some variation in weight, measure or count is permitted when caused by unavoidable deviations in weighing, measuring or counting the individual packages as long as the average is not below the quantity stated,” APPA's website says. “No unreasonable shortage in any package is permitted, and variations above the declared quantity cannot be unreasonably large. Certain variations from the declared quantity are permissible when caused by ordinary and customary exposure to conditions that normally occur in the distribution process, after the product has been first sold and delivered.”

Buzz News reached out to Dollar General via email, 9Lives via contact form and DiEmidio via TikTok comment.

@james_wrigg Dollar General Cat Food Extreme Weight Discrepancy! #dollargeneralfraud #scalefraud #shortweighting #scamalert ♬ original sound – Jimmy Wrigg