Farm-Scape, Episode 1589

The Canadian Pork Industry is preparing to introduce a new retail pork merchandising manual which reflects recently approved changes to the naming protocols for the various cuts of pork.

Nomenclature refers to the names Canadian retailers must use when labeling meat cuts and products. A new pork nomenclature, developed by a stakeholder committee representing industry, government and consumer groups, was approved by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency last month and will become mandatory January 1, 2005.

Ontario Pork Director of Consumer Marketing Jim Vidoczy says a new retail pork merchandising manual, which reflects all the nomenclature changes, will be rolled out next month.

"We are gearing up in the east and the west to roll this out through seminars with retailers and butcher shops and anyone who uses our product. It's an 87 page manual and it's quite a work.

We will be working with retail to make sure that they fully understand the changes and get them entered into their systems properly.

We view this as an opportunity to increase pork sales and we will be tracking movement of cuts, especially things like sirloin, ribeye and blade, to see if increased movement will occur because of the new nomenclature.

The new pork merchandising manual should be ready for distribution in September.

The first one we did was in 1991 and we held seminars from Nova Scotia right out west and we will probably do something similar this year.

It usually would include a cutting demonstration and a real hands on time to go through the manual and now we will obviously incorporate all the new nomenclature changes so that front line staff fully understand them and can take advantage of them."

Vidoczy says the new cut names for pork are more consistent with the cut names for beef and veal and they are much easier for consumers to understand.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.