The pork butt is the top of the pork shoulder. USDA prints its price under more than 30 names, and they differ in only three things: how much fat is left on, whether the bone is in, and how it is packed. USDA's official name for the bone-in piece is the Boston butt, IMPS 406. It is the shoulder with the picnic, the skin and the neck bones taken off. The boneless butt is IMPS 406A: the same piece with every bone and the skin removed. Three of those 30-plus lines carry 85 percent of the pounds. This article explains what the names mean and what each one costs.
What the words mean
1/4 trim and 1/8 trim tell you how much fat is left on the outside, in inches: a quarter inch or an eighth of an inch. Less fat costs more.
Steak ready is a butt trimmed further. USDA does not describe the cut in words, but its numbers show what comes off: about 12 percent of the weight, sold as lean pork trim.
Boneless is the 406A. Cellar trimmed ("ct" on the report) is a boneless butt with the meat and fat that sat over the blade bone cut off as well. It is IMPS 407.
The packing words: "vac" means vacuum-packed. "1 pc vac" means one piece per bag. "Combo" is a big bulk bin of about 2,000 pounds. "Paper" and "poly" are wrapped or bagged. "Fzn" means frozen, and "ai" means added ingredients, a solution injected into the meat.
How much of the butt each style keeps
USDA's guide to the pork cutout starts from a 1/4 trim bone-in butt and shows how much is left in each style:
| Style | Weight kept | What comes off |
|---|---|---|
| 1/4 trim butt (vac, paper or combo) | 100% | Nothing |
| 1/8 trim butt | 95.4% | Fat, plus a little fatty trim |
| 1/4 trim steak ready butt | 87.9% | About 12% as lean trim |
| 1/8 trim steak ready butt | 85.1% | About 12% as lean trim, plus fat |
| 1/4 trim boneless butt | 90.6% | 7.5% bone, plus a little lean trim |
So two quotes are only comparable if they are for the same style. A 1/8 trim steak-ready butt has lost about 15 percent of its weight before it ships, so its price per pound has to be higher.
Which ones actually trade
In the last 12 months three lines did almost all the business: the 1/4 trim bone-in butt in vac (about 40 percent of the pounds), the 1/4 trim boneless butt in vac (about 33 percent) and the 1/8 trim steak-ready butt, one piece per bag (about 12 percent). The other 29 lines are small and many of them do not print every day.
What each step costs
The middle price over the last 12 months, and how much more each one cost than the most common line, the 1/4 trim bone-in butt in vac:
| Line | Middle price | Compared with the bone-in vac |
|---|---|---|
| 1/4 trim butt, vac | $1.27/lb | the base |
| 1/4 trim butt, combo | $1.15/lb | about 12¢ less |
| 1/4 trim butt, 1 pc vac | $1.36/lb | about 9¢ more |
| 1/4 trim boneless butt, vac | $1.45/lb | about 17¢ more |
| 1/8 trim steak ready butt, 1 pc vac | $1.52/lb | about 24¢ more |
Boneless cost more than bone-in on 99 percent of days last year, and on every single day both printed since 2013. The most expensive line is the cellar-trimmed boneless butt, about 99 cents a pound more than a regular boneless butt.
The packaging itself is cheap. USDA's guide counts about 1 cent a pound for a combo bin, 4.5 cents for a vacuum bag and 6.75 cents for one steak-ready piece per bag. But on the report, vac sold for about 12 cents more than combo, so the gap is much bigger than the cost of the bag. Two lines do not follow the pattern: paper-wrapped bone-in butts sold for about 14 cents more than vac, on very small volume, and boneless butts sold for about the same price in combo as in vac.
How the prices move
Over a month, the main lines rise and fall together. From one day to the next they do not. The 1/4 trim bone-in vac moved more than 5 percent in a day on only 4 percent of days last year. The steak-ready line did it on about a third of days, and the combo line on more than half.
For a buyer it comes down to one choice: pay the packer to trim and debone, or buy the simpler cut, do the work yourself and keep the trim.