The revised terms were reviewed by the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, American Marketing Service and retailers, packers and scale label companies engaged in the process.

More than 350 cuts of pork and beef will have the new labels. A pork butt, for example, will simply be a Boston roast and described as a bone-in pork shoulder.

What had previously been labeled as a “beef loin top sirloin steak, boneless” is now just a sirloin steak.

The full list of the revised beef and pork common names are now available for retailers to integrate into their scale label programs.

“We are pleased to have industry support to introduce new, simplified fresh meat names that will help consumers better understand the beef and pork cuts they see every day in the meat case,” said Jim Henger, senior executive director of B2B Marketing for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, a contractor to the Beef Checkoff Program.

“Now that we have the feedback and approval from the ICMISC, retailers and packers can begin to implement the new names and labels to give them a competitive advantage and drive meat department sales.”

“The problem is consumers didn’t really understand the names that were being used and still don’t,” Patrick Fleming, director of retail marketing for the Pork Board, told the Associated Press.

“The names confused consumers to the point where they’d go, ‘You know, the information doesn’t help me know how to use it, so I’m going to stop using it.’ That was a wake-up call for both the beef industry and pork industry.”

The URMIS naming system began in the early ’70s and was oriented heavily toward processors and butchers, but officials don’t think the terminology was ever clearly understood.

As boxed beef cuts became more popular for distributors and retailers, the need to coordinate names with consumer understanding grew.

“Through our research, we found that consumers are really familiar with three to four meat cuts,” said Trevor Amen, marketing director for B2B.

“So the goal of this – one of the opportunities for the entire industry – is to broaden the spectrum of cuts consumers are comfortable with, that they’re confident in purchasing the product and then preparing the product correctly.” 

—From combined reports