The purpose of IMPS is to facilitate industry trade and clarification. The IMPS Standard was created and is maintained by the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) branch of the USDA. IMPS are created through voluntary consensus specifications. Large volume purchasers such as Federal, State and Local Government agencies, retailers, schools, restaurants, hotels, and other food service users reference the IMPS for procuring meat products. The government’s IMPS provide a standard description for many meat primals, wholesale cuts, sub-primals and retail cuts. AMS provides the IMPS information on their website at http://www.ams.usda.gov/lsg/stand/imps.htm
The North American Meat Processors Association is a non-profit trade association comprised of meat processing companies and associates. The organization is best known by its acronym, NAMP, and is universally recognized for its world-renowned publication, “The Meat Buyer’s Guide.” This guide is used in the meat and foodservice industries as a purchasing guide and reference. NAMP has combined with IMPS and uses color photography to facilitate the industry’s use of the IMPS standard descriptions. Find out more information about NAMP and the Meat Buyers Guide at http://www.namp.com/namp/Default.asp.
The Beef, Pork, Lamb and Veal U.P.C. list on this website provides IMPS series numbers for URMIS descriptions. The U.P.C. list provides two columns that have IMPS Series Numbers. The IMPS Series Numbers are assigned based on current industry procurement, trade and processing methods.
The Primal IMPS column provides IMPS series numbers for the bone in origin primal that the URMIS Description (Description Line 1 and Description Line 2) is processed from.
Cuts that can be processed from more than one primal are assigned the carcass IMPS number.
The Item IMPS column provides IMPS series numbers for the URMIS description listed in the Description Line 1 and Description Line 2 columns. The IMPS series numbers are assigned based on one of the following criteria and sequence:
1) The related cut
2)
The related individual muscle (IM)
3) The related sub-primal that yields that cut
4) The related wholesale cut that yields that cut as well as other cuts
The numbers can be used as a cross-reference with the Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications and The Meat Buyers Guide.
There are several benefits of using the MeatTrack.com IMPS information:
- Provides a list of the IMPS assigned primals, wholesale cuts, subprimals and individual muscles that the cut of meat is processed from
- Provides the IMPS numbers that enables tracking of the anatomical breakdown from the primal to the specific cut of meat.
- Supports the URMIS system
- Provides a training tool
- IMPS provide a standard for procurement, receiving and processing primals, wholesale cuts and sub-primals
To view the IMPS information, from this websites home page, click on the Organizations menu option.
