USDA Renames Beef And Pork Cuts To Boost Sales
Think you know your Ribeye Steak from a New York? Or a Pork Butt from a roast? Think again! In an effort to make meat choices more clear, the USDA is renaming more than 350 cuts of meat - just in time for the summer grilling season.
Want my opinion as a "Foodie"? You'll have to wait until the end of this article.
A stroll down the meat aisle had become baffling for shoppers looking for a steak. When they would see packages of "butler steak" or "beef shoulder top blade steak, boneless, flat iron"—they would walk away with an empty cart, said Trevor Amen, director of market intelligence for the Beef Checkoff Program.
So recently, the National Pork Board and the Beef Checkoff Program, with the blessing of officials with USDA, got the nod to update the Uniform Retail Meat Identification Standards, or URMIS. Though the URMIS system is voluntary, a majority of U.S. food retailers use it.
Goodbye Pork Butt and hello Boston Roast. Adios pork chop and buenas dias Porterhouse Chop.
As the resident "Foodie", let me offer you my take on this move. Changing the names of more than 350 cuts of meat will not make things easier for the average consumer that gets confused by the multiple choices available in their butcher's case. Instead, this move will make it even more confusing for them - because now the new names won't match the millions of cookbooks that have been printed over the years. In addition, these new names will pose a challenge to people that did know these cuts by their old names. In other words - we'll go from half the population not recognizing the names to everyone having to learn new terms for their old favorites.
What do you think?
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