(Photo courtesy of Maryland
Department of Agriculture)

No, I'm not talking about what we're all going to have to do after stuffing our faces this holiday season.

This is about the Maryland Department of Ag's Weights and Measures Program, which aims to protect us little people by making sure that all commercial transactions are fair and equitable.

Every time you buy food that's weighed by a scale in a supermarket, every time you buy gasoline through a gasoline pump, every time you pay moving fees based on how much your stuff weighs, have you ever wondered if you were getting cheated? Well, the MDA's Weights and Measures people wonder the same thing.

That why weights and measures officials inspect and regulate the equipment businesses use to determine the quantity of commodities such as fuel oil, food products, livestock, grain, and precious metals. That's also why they test the net contents of packaged goods that are labeled by weight, volume, or length. Or why they conduct undercover buying and selling to insure that the entire transaction is conducted in an honest manner. And why they investigate consumer complaints. In Fiscal Year 2007, they looked into 500 complaints.

Why should you care about all this?

Tune in tomorrow to find out which local businesses MDA said were naughty recently.