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Our
Mission
The
mission of the Arkansas Bureau of Standards is to ensure that
equity and fairness prevail in commercial transactions that take
place in the marketplace and to establish measurement accuracy
and uniformity in the state’s commerce through enforcement
of laws and regulations that both benefit and protect buyers and
sellers of products and services.
How
we Accomplish our Mission
On
any given day, every Arkansan makes dozens of purchase decisions
- at the grocery store and the gas pump, to pay for a hardware
item or feed a coin meter at a car wash, for a yard of fabric
or a gallon of home heating fuel. As diverse as the character
of these "daily necessities" may be, they all have one
ingredient in common: The trust that is built into every transaction
by a weights and measures program. Not only is the Division maintained
to protect the interest of the buyer - that is the shopper, wage
earner, and homemaker, but also it is maintained to protect the
interests of the seller - that is the manufacturer, packer, processor,
wholesaler, and retail merchant as well.
"Each
U.S. Citizen pays more for a single grapefruit than for an entire
year of weights and measures regulation."
The
National Conference on Weights and Measures
It
is impossible to mention anything we eat, wear, or use that has
not been weighed or measured - perhaps even many times. Weights
and measures regulatory professionals set standards and enforce
uniform procedures to verify weight, volume, length or count,
ensuring that consumers get the quantity that they pay for and
that businesses sell the quantity that they advertise. Because
of the unlimited range of products and services that are influenced
by weights and measures activities, these standards create a comprehensive,
impartial and often invisible shield that protects equity in our
marketplace.
Consider
the pay back. A recent budget review shows that the annual cost
of U.S. weights and measures enforcement is just 50 cents per
citizen. Compare this to the potential losses - to buyers or sellers
- if a small error in the performance of a measurement device
occurs. For example, an inaccuracy of slightly more than 1 tablespoon
per 5 gallons at gasoline pumps equals an error of $125 million
annually...almost the equivalent of the annual cost of all U.S.
weights and measures programs combined. Multiply these errors
by the tens of thousands of products that are bought and sold
every day and you get the big picture.
"An
effective weights and measures program benefits the economy much
like roads and bridges support the transportation industry."
As
our population has grown and the number of products in the market
has increased, the responsibility to "see that things measure
up" has become an increasingly more important responsibility
of your local weights and measures officials. Weights and Measures:
It’s the fuel that makes the economy run smoothly; in our
state, in our nation and throughout the whole world.
A
Voice From the Past
"WEIGHTS
AND MEASURES may be ranked among the necessaries of life to every
individual of human society. They enter into the economical arrangements
and daily concerns of every family. They are necessary to every
occupation of human industry; to the distribution and security
of every species of property; to every transaction of trade and
commerce; to the labors of the husbandman; to the ingenuity of
the artificer; to the studies of the philosopher; to the researches
of the antiquarian; to the navigation of the mariner and the marches
of the soldier; to all the exchanges of peace, and all the operations
of war. The knowledge of them, as in established use, is among
the first elements of education, and is often learned by those
who learn nothing else, not even to read and write. This knowledge
is riveted in the memory by the habitual application of it to
the employments of men throughout life."
John
Quincy Adams
Extract from the Report on Weights and
Measures by the Secretary of State,
made to the Senate on February 22, 1821
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