By Ilena Peng
In a time of belt-tightening and America’s protein obsession, pork should be on a winning streak. It’s cheap compared with beef, which is climbing to record high prices, and it’s the type of clean protein consumers can’t seem to get enough of.
But pork consumption per capita in the US is forecast near the lowest level in about a decade, according to government data. That’s as the “other white meat” has long left US consumers confused over its preparation and nutritional profile.
“People don’t want to risk something not tasting great when it comes down to it,” said Reba Hatcher, chief commercial officer at meat subscription company ButcherBox. “Even if it’s cheaper when you go to the checkout, it’s not cheaper if you end up throwing it away or people end up hating it at the dinner table.”
In short, pork seems to have a messaging problem.
Pork is the cheapest ground meat — at $4.81 a pound, compared with the same amount of ground beef at $7.95 for the year ending mid-June, according to data from research firm NielsenIQ. Pork steak or pork chops cost about a third of a beef steak’s price. Yet the pork industry has struggled to get that point across to shoppers.
Cooking and culture
For a long time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommended whole cuts of pork be cooked to 160F (71C), leaving many home chefs with dry and tough meat.
Even 15 years after the agency lowered that recommended cooking temperature, pork still hasn’t managed to escape that reputation, said Matthew Gatto, chief operating officer at True Story Foods, which introduced its first pre-marinated retail pork products across California Target stores earlier this year.
There’s also a cultural aspect to America’s preference for beef. Steakhouses were long the apex of fine dining. Nearly all burgers are beef, and about 60% of consumers favor beef hot dogs over pork, according to the National Hot Dog Council. That’s in contrast to Europe, where frankfurters are traditionally pork, and Asia where pork is by far the dominant protein. It’s also of note that pork is prohibited by some religions, including Islam and Judaism.
Chicken, meanwhile, has been boosted by its lower fat, low cost, high protein value – messaging that the pork industry hasn’t been able to successfully capitalize.
“We assumed that people understood that meat and sausage specifically were the original place to get protein,” said Jamie Schmelzer, vice president of marketing at Johnsonville Sausage. “But a few years ago, we found a study where sausage lost to yogurt and beef jerky on the claim, ‘Good source of protein.’ And so we decided to not take that quite so for granted.”
Pork’s breakfast forms — bacon and sausage — have faced headwinds as economic concerns have slowed foodservice demand. Retail bacon sales have been sluggish too, helping to bring average consumer prices in June to the lowest levels in more than two years.
That’s in stark contrast to beef per capita consumption, which is projected to be at its highest in more than 15 years.
Higher beef prices do generally make other proteins more competitive, but “the magnitude of that and how quick consumers make those changes is often overstated,” said Glynn Tonsor, a professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University. And users of GLP-1 drugs, a group that has led consumer demand for protein higher, have “weaker or absent preferences” for pork, according to a study by Tonsor and Arizona State University assistant professor Justin Bina.
The pork industry is trying to change that, with a shift toward pre-seasoned, ground products that shoppers might see as more convenient and approachable.
Smithfield Foods Inc., one of the country’s largest pork processors, in April launched a new line of precut, premarinated pork products. The flavors, which include carne asada and Korean BBQ, are going after “that seasoning that traditionally consumers think belongs only to beef or only to chicken,” said Marianne Radley, the company’s managing director of marketing.
Ground pork is “probably the biggest potential item for the industry today,” National Pork Board Chief Executive Officer David Newman said in an interview.
Still, ground beef remains uncontested. The product posted $17 billion in sales over the past 12 months, dwarfing the sub-$3 billion sales of all other ground meats together, according to NielsenIQ data.
Ground products will have a “decent level of built-in demand,” with a subset of consumers who will be interested just because of where ground beef prices are, said Heather Jones, the founder of Heather Jones Research LLC. The turkey industry, for example, has benefited — but it also began positioning itself as a lower-fat, lower-cholesterol competitor with beef much earlier than pork, she said.
Still, “I would be hard-pressed to think that it takes 10% of the ground meat market over the next five years,” Jones said of pork. “Eventually there can be some success, but I think it’s going to be slow going.”
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