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In the late 1950s, consumers were starting to place more value on time and time spent at the service meat counter. The meat industry started migrating from the service meat counter to a self-service meat case. There were no standards for cut names, and consumers were confused. In 1973 on recommendations of the Industrywide Cooperative Meat Identification Standards Committee (ICMISC), Uniform Meat Identity Standard (URMIS) was established to implement standardization of meat cuts and end consumer confusion. Over the years, URMIS has become the standard used in the meat industry to identify and label meat cuts.
URMIS Publications:
1973 1995 2003
  
Today URMIS is maintained on MeatTrack.com and can be accessed and downloaded to an electronic file. For more historical information on URMIS, see The History of the Meat Scale Label page.
In the late 1960s, the industry began utilizing more technology, and scanning was introduced for fixed-weight grocery products. Scanning came about by developing a system of lines and spaces that could be read by a scanner and then interpreted into numbers to identify a product.
In 1984, the meat industry and the Uniform Code Council (now GS1 US) created and published a guideline for assigning U.P.C. numbers to random weight products. In 1985, the 4-digit code was assigned to URMIS descriptions which provided the industry with a standard for scanning variable measure meat products. This was the beginning of a scanning system that was based on industry standards.
This system served the industry well for a time but had limitations because the original 4-digit U.P.C. number assignments were only 4,370 numbers. At the same time, the consumer demand for convenience-type items was increasing, and the industry needed to expand the number of available U.P.C. numbers to accommodate the changing trend. In 1996, an addendum was added to the original U.P.C. descriptions that added 4,370 additional U.P.C. numbers.
Branding was another trend that the industry and consumers migrated to, and the original system as created was limited. In 2003, the Meat Brand Description Code (MBDC) was created to provide brand expansion. For more information see the Meat Brand Description Code page.
U.P.C. Publications:
Original Addendum MBDC
  
Over the years, the Institutional Meat Purchase Specification (IMPS) standard was created by the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) branch of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The IMPS standard provides descriptions for meat primals, wholesale cuts and sub-primals. For more information see the IMPS page.
Regulations have been a key driver for the need for standardization in the meat industry. Historically, requirements for meat labeling have enforced the need for URMIS. For more information see the Labeling page. After the events of September 11, 2001, the Bioterrorism Act was signed into law June 12, 2002. This legislation highlights the need for all facets of the industry to protect their products and requires that traceability and industry product tracking are essential.
Over the years changes in the way we communicate have made a major impact on our lives and industry. Over time as standards evolved, the need to have real-time access and electronic communication became important. In 2004, MeatTrack.com came into existence with the goal of providing a communication platform for maintaining current and future standards for variable measure meat products. |
