Pig meat or Pork

Question

I work in a, seemingly, international organization where English is the preferred language - however most employees do not have English as their native tongue. We have a lot of customers within the field of agriculture and in a report I saw someone had written something like:

1. Pig meat or
2. Producers of pig meat.

Would this be a correct phrase? The report has existed for many years with this “naming”. I would however think that the correct term to use would be

1. Pork or
2. Producers of pork

I am thinking that no one has corrected it because it is not their native language or because maybe they just don’t really care.

Am I wrong here? Is ‘pig meat’ a correct term?

Answer 1

Pork is pig meat meant for consumption. Pork is food. Meat is generally a substance/material.

Most of meat from a pig is pork, but if you find inedible or otherwise unsuited for consumption parts of pig, that are still meat, you'd call them pig meat, but not pork. I don't know enough of pig anatomy or butcher's craft to give specific examples of what parts of pig carcass are discarded, but these could count among pig meat that is not pork.

I guess you could also find pork referred to as pig meat - in contexts where it's not meant as food. Say, target of ballistic tests of ammo, or test material in chemical tests - someone buys 10kg of pork shoulder, packs it tightly into a block, shoots a 9x22mm round from a pistol at it, and reports "depth of penetration in a block of pig meat."

Answer 2

Pig meat is not incorrect, but it's dispreferred and sounds very unusual.

Pork is a natural and common way to describe the meat that comes from pigs.

Answer 3

The term 'pig meat' occurs in many legal contexts in documents connected with the agricultural, food safety and animal welfare policies of the European Union. In that technical context it is not dispreferred. Outside that context its use would be considered bizarre.