Glossary
Meat Packer Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential meat packer terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key meat packer vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in meat packer training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Allergen control
- Keeping allergens separate.
- Boxed beef
- Packed cuts.
- Carcass
- Body after slaughter.
- Chill cooler
- Cold room for carcasses.
- Fabrication
- Breaking carcasses.
- GMP
- Good manufacturing practices.
- HACCP
- Hazard analysis food safety plan.
- Hide
- Animal skin.
- Humane handling
- Treating animals properly.
- Kill floor
- Harvest area.
- Line speed
- Pace of the line.
- Lot code
- Batch tracking number.
- Primal
- Large cut.
- Sanitation
- Cleaning to kill germs.
- USDA
- Federal inspection agency.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Meat Packer practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Meat Packer training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.