Pork Chops: New Names Include ‘Porterhouse Chop’

The pork and beef industry have teamed up to create new names for pork chops, including the “pork porterhouse chop,” the “pork ribeye chop,” and the “pork New York chop.”
Pork Chops: New Names Include ‘Porterhouse Chop’
Cooks at a restaurant chop pork meat to make tacos at a market in Mexico City on May 5, 2011. ( OMAR TORRES/AFP/Getty Images)
4/5/2013
Updated:
4/7/2013

Industry website Porkretail.org says that “14 cuts of pork are getting new consumer-friendly cut names, many that align with already-famous beef names.”

Some of the new pork names are borrowing the nomenclature used to describe cuts of beef. Now, the pork rib chop will be called the “pork ribeye chop,” and the pork top loin chop will be called the “pork New York chop,” the website says. The pork top loin chop will now be called the “pork porterhouse chop.”  

NPR reported that the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the National Pork Board are unifying the names of meat cuts in an attempt to make pork more appealing to consumers.

“Names have the power to transform the ‘everyday’ into the ‘extraordinary,’” the website states, and added that “names have the unique ability to forge an identity, and you are about to discover the power of a name to re-define pork’s image in the meat case, just in time for grilling season.”

Ceci Snyder, who heads the National Pork Board, told the broadcaster that “there’s a misunderstanding that all pork chops are the same.”

In all, the pork and beef industries are looking to change more than 350 names of meat cuts, reported Reuters.

“One of our biggest challenges has been the general belief among consumers that a pork chop is a pork chop,” said Patrick Fleming, also with the National Pork Board, in elaborating on the names. “But not all pork chops are equal, and not all pork chops are priced equally.”