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Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications (IMPS) is a set of standard meat specifications maintained by the Agricultural Marketing Service Branch of the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture.) These specifications are valid for North America (Canada and America have harmonized their meat codes.)

Knowing the IMPS code for a particular cut of meat is way overkill for non-professional cooks. Sometimes, though, you may get really frustrated and annoyed by the confusing names that various supermarkets seem to make up out of the blue for cuts of meat. At these times, you can flip to these tables as a last ditch resort to try to see if various cuts are really different or are the same.

Each type of meat is assigned its own range of numbers. These are the ranges:

100		Fresh Beef
200		Lamb and Mutton
300		Veal and Calf
400		Fresh Pork
500		Cured, Cured and Smoked, Cooked Pork
600		Cured, Dried and Smoked Beef
700		Variety Meats and Edible By-Products
800		Sausage Products
11		Fresh Goat

You can find the tables posted in Adobe Acrobat PDF files at this link (link valid as of December 2008:)

Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications tables

Other entries for:

Meat
Affettati, Beef, Buffalo, Cap On / Cap Off, Game, Goat, Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications, Minced Meat, Offal, Paillards, Pork, Potted Meats, Poultry, Roasts, Sausages, Sheep, Steak, Veal, Venison, Yak