Georgia state agriculture officials withheld from sale a total of 1,648 gallons of milk products at three stores because the cartons were not fully filled.  The under-filled containers were found during a recent investigation, says the Georgia Department of Agriculture.

The products were "Barber's Brand" and "Meadow Gold" and were found at three Sam's Club stores in Athens, Oakwood and Columbus.  The milk was processed and packaged by Barber's Dairy of Birmingham, AL, and Meadow Gold of Huntsville, AL.

"This is clearly a case where a problem at the processing plants resulted in consumers being short-changed when they bought these two brands of milk at these stores," said state ag Commissioner Tommy Irvin.  "Our consumer protection division is dedicated to ensure that when Georgians buy a gallon of milk they get a full gallon."

Inspectors discovered the problem during a routing supermarket inspection and pulled all under-filled milk products from the stores.  Irvin said the stores will not be fined, because the fault lies with the processors.

"We'll continue to monitor stores that sell milk products from these processors," Irvin said.  "We've received a great deal of cooperation from the stores...and we've also been assured by the processors in Alabama that the problems has been corrected."