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Featuring refers to the price discounts offered to consumers through retailers'
weekly feature advertisements.
Price spreads measure the allocation of the consumer dollar
among the various stages of production and marketing in the livestock/meat
industry. Price spreads depict monthly average values, and the differences
among those values, at the farm, wholesale, and retail stages of
the production and marketing chain. Meat
price spreads outline the current methodology ERS uses to determine
farm, wholesale, and retail values for meat. (ERS is required by
the Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act of 1999 to continue using
retail prices from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in calculating
price spreads for 2 years after the first release of the retail
scanner prices for meat.)
Random-weight items are products
sold individually—such as a T-bone steak or a turkey breast—or
in packages—such as a multipack of chicken legs or pork chops—that
vary in weight. Most meat and produce items sold in supermarkets
are random-weight products. In contrast, fixed-weight items—such
packaged lunch meat—are sold in standard-sized packages with
fixed weights.
Supermarkets are retail grocery
stores with dairy, produce, fresh meat, packaged food, and nonfood
departments and annual sales of $2 million or more.
Uniform Retail Meat Identity Standards (URMIS) codes were
established in 1973 by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.
The system was developed to provide a retail-meat-cut identification
system and a standardized nomenclature for every retail red meat
item (beef, veal, lamb, and pork). The goal of URMIS is to eliminate
consumer confusion caused by the proliferation of names used to
describe retail meat cuts. Before URMIS, a specific retail cut had
several different names depending on the store or region of the
country in which it was sold. For example, a Kansas City strip,
New York strip, and beef loin steak are all the same cut. While
the URMIS standards have been part of the industry for several decades,
the program is strictly voluntary and has seen mixed levels of implementation.
Volume index compares the month's volume of sales to the
monthly average of volume sold in 2001. For example, 500 pounds
of ground chuck was sold in June 2001. For all of 2001, the monthly
average was 400 pounds. Putting this on an index basis (with 2001=100),
the index value for ground chuck for June 2001 would be 125. In
ERS' meat scanner database, the volume index is reported for each
cut and aggregate category.
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