Beef, Pork Products Get New Names

Consumers will soon find their fresh beef and pork products labeled with new names. The National Pork Board and Beef Checkoff Program have received USDA approval to introduce update Uniform Retail Meat Identification Standards (URMIS) nomenclature for retailers to use on packs.

Trevor Amen, director of market intelligence, B2B marketing, National Cattlemen's Beef Association, a contractor to the Beef Checkoff Program, said the updates are a result of years of consumer research. "We really recognized a need to update the system - there's been a lot of changes in the industry," he said. "A couple of major ones have been the confirmation of the animal - the way that beef is merchandised, when beef went from sending sides of beef into the retail counter to more boxed beef today and even further trimmed and fabricated cuts in retail, there's been a lot of changes."

Amen added that the consumer is looking for simplified naming and unique, identifiable cut names. 

Instead of the "pork chop," grocery retailers will be filling shelves with "porterhouse chops," "ribeye chops," and "New York chops," Reuters reports. 

Amen said the focus was on new, individual muscle cuts that the industry has worked hard getting into the marketplace. One example is the flat iron steak. "The old URMIS system based on anatomical structure would be listed as 'beef shoulder top blade steak boneless flat iron,'" he said. "And you can see that gets really long and sort of confusing for the consumer. So we identified the common name now as 'flat iron steak' and you list all of those unique characteristics down on the second line (of the packaging)."