I'm trying to say that there's black pork, cheap pork, premium pork, etc.
Hence,
1) Not all pork is created equal? 2) Not all pork are created equal?
I understand that plural of pork is still pork. But in this case, does the inclusion of "all" warrant an "are"?
Thanks in advance.
Pork is not the plural of pork.
Pork, when referring to the meat, is not a case like sheep or aircraft where the plural form is the same as the singular—although swine, the animal from which pork is derived, can be.
A deer was getting into the garden, so we put up a taller fence.
Three deer were captured on the wildlife camera.
Rather, pork being a type of meat is an uncountable noun (i.e. mass noun), like other words for undifferentiated materials or qualities, like cotton, or satisfaction. A mass noun is considered singular, with no plural form, and always takes singular verb agreement, so
Not all pork is created equal.
is the standard formulation.
That said, when referring to specific varieties or portions of that material, uncountable nouns can often be treated as countable, and thus do have a plural form which takes plural concord. For example, beer as a substance is a mass noun, as in they poured beer into pitchers. I can, however, say I had four beers grammatically if I mean to say I had four glasses of beer, or that I tried four different kinds of beer. Which meaning I intend will depend on context.
It is not common to use pork this way, but if the context is very clear, porks is acceptable. For example, waitstaff at a dinner function where pork, fish, and vegetarian dishes are offered might ask the kitchen for "three porks," meaning three servings of pork. A journalist might write of Spam and other highly processed porks, or contrast farming methods of North American porks and East Asian porks, and so forth. And in this restricted usage, not all porks are created equal would be acceptable as well.
