The National Pork Board is confident new names for some of the traditional cuts of pork will help improve consumers’ understanding of pork and how to properly prepare those cuts.
In April, the National Pork Board rolled out new names for some of the traditional cuts of pork as a way to address the lack of consumer understanding of pork cuts and how to prepare them.
National Pork Board CEO Chris Novak told those on hand last week for World Pork Expo in Des Moines the goal is to provide names and information to consumers on the labels that are helpful and friendly to them.
What we’re trying to do is listen to our customers, listen to consumers, learn from them and provide them a better shopping experience as well as a better dining and eating experience.
What we did was reached out to consumers and asked them what they thought, what they saw when they walked through the grocery store and looked into the meat case.
The answer that came back was a lot of confusion in terms of what is a pork butt, what’s cushion meat and we realized that we needed to take some steps.
We actually worked with retailers, we worked with other people in the meat industry and even other livestock organizations to come up with new meat labels that are more consumer friendly.
They give cooking guidance as well as then talk about where the meat cut is from, which animal it’s from.
The name porterhouse chop is one.
The porterhouse steak is obviously a familiar name for people that love that beef cut.
The porterhouse chop is coming from the same part of the pig as compared to the beef cow and so that’s going to help consumers understand that they can get similar eating experiences by buying this pork cut as they may have bought a similar beef cut in the past.
Novak says the response to the new names from consumers has been positive.
He says they appreciate having more information and more clarity and the National Pork Board is anxious to see what this will mean as efforts continue to market pork to consumers around the world.
