An official website of the State of Maryland.

Maryland.gov Translate

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Maryland Department of Agriculture

Consumer Protection

About the Weights & Measures Program

The MDA Weights and Measures program directly benefits all Marylanders by ensuring the fairness and equity of all commercial transactions involving determinations of quantity. This includes such day-to-day activities as:

  • the sale of food that is weighed by a scale in a supermarket;
  • the sale of gasoline through a gasoline pump; or,
  • the sale of fuel oil through a truck-mounted meter.

What we inspect & do

Maryland weights and measures officials inspect and regulate devices used in determining the quantity of commodities as diverse as fuel oil, food products, livestock, grain, and precious metals. This includes:

  • Inspecting and auditing electronic scanning devices at retail store check-out counters to verify prices stored in the retailer's computer
  • Regulating firewood and coal sales, and even the amount of crab sold at a seafood store.
  • Testing the net contents of packaged goods that are labeled by weight, volume, or count
  • Conducting undercover buying and selling to insure that the entire transaction is conducted in an honest manner
  • Investigating consumer complaints

Typically each year field staff conduct 35,000 to 45,000 inspections of commercial weighing and measuring devices and test about 4,000 individual lots of prepackaged commodities offered for sale.​

Know what you're paying for

Maryland's Weights and Measures program ensures you get accurate amounts when you buy gas, groceries, and other goods sold by weight or measure.

Consumer information

More information about weights & measures

Laws & regulations

​Annotated Code of Maryland​

  • Code of the Public Laws of Maryland. Agriculture Article. Title 2. Department of Agriculture. Subtitle 11. Weights and Measures
  • The Code of the Public Laws of Maryland is the compilation of legislation that composes Maryland’s statutory code and can be found online on the Maryland General Assembly website. 

Code of Maryland Regulations

  • Code of Maryland Regulations (COMAR). Title 15. Department of Agriculture. Subtitle 3 is the subtitle that contains the regulations that govern Weights and Measures.
  • COMAR is in the public domain and the most recent version can be found at the Library of Maryland Regulations website.

Weights & measures organizations