Pork butt comes from shoulder area | Marketers hope the rebranding campaign will reap additional sales and premiums
Some butts are world-famous, such as Kim Kardashian’s, but they don’t necessarily conjure up images of class.
Others are only famous in North America, such as the pork butt and Boston butt.
In the United States, getting rid of the latter two terms is a priority for the hog and pork industries and they’re willing to spend a lot of money this summer to do so.
They also plan to push for classier sounding new names for old cuts of pork.
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“I’d like y’all to say hello to the porterhouse pork chop, the New York pork chop and the rib eye pork chop,” U.S. National Pork Board president Karen Richter said to reporters during the World Pork Expo in Des Moines, Iowa June 5-7.
“This does mean that we will need to say goodbye to names like pork butt, but we are hopeful that consumers will be able to put that old name behind them.”
The pork board has launched a campaign to convince retailers to stop using terms like loin chop and pork butt and to inform consumers how to properly cook the cuts.
The culinary sensual damage from overcooking pork is a major factor in reducing pork demand and price, marketers say. It often doesn’t seem as succulent as an expensive steak.
Pork cuts have generally lacked the retail and restaurant pizzazz of ex-pensive beef cuts like the porterhouse steak, the rib eye and the New York, so rebranding old loin cuts with those premium names and getting rid of snigger-inducing names like the pork butt should make consumers value the meat more highly, pork marketers hope.
Many consumers believe the pork butt comes from the buttocks region of the pig. At supper on the evening of Richter’s comments, a Western Producer reporter asked his Iowa-raised waitress where she thought the meat of the pork butt came from.
“Uhhhh … the butt?” was her response.
This is a misperception. The pork butt is actually from the shoulder region of the pig. It got its butt label before the American Revolution, when colonials would store butchered pork shoulders in brine-filled barrels called butts. Those barrels are no longer used, but the butt name stuck.
That colonial and barrel connection is also the origin of the term Boston butt for the same cut.
The pork cut will now be promoted by the hog and pork industries as the pork shoulder roast, which is more accurate and doesn’t make consumers think of an actual pig’s butt.
