Butcher

Duties

Butchery is a traditional line of work. In the industrialized world, slaughterhouses use butchers to slaughter the animals, performing one or a few of the steps repeatedly as specialists on a semi-automated disassembly line. The steps include stunning (rendering the animal incapacitated), exsanguination (severing the carotid or brachial arteries to facilitate blood removal), skinning (removing the hide or pelt) or scalding and dehairing (pork), evisceration (removing the viscera) and splitting (dividing the carcass in half longitudinally).

After the carcasses are chilled (unless "hot-boned"), primary butchery consists of selecting carcasses, sides, or quarters from which primal cuts can be produced with the minimum of wastage; separating the primal cuts from the carcass; trimming primal cuts and preparing them for secondary butchery or sale; and storing cut meats. Secondary butchery involves boning, trimming and value-adding of primal cuts in preparation for sale. Historically, primary and secondary butchery were performed in the same establishment, but the advent of methods of preservation (vacuum packing) and low cost transportation has largely separated them.

In parts of the world, it is common for butchers to perform many or all of the butcher's duties. Where refrigeration is less common, these skills are required to sell the meat of slaughtered animals.

Butcher shop

Butchers sell their goods in specialized stores, commonly termed a butcher shop (American English), butchery (South African English) or butchers (British English). Butchers at a butcher shop may perform primary butchery, but will typically perform secondary butchery to prepare fresh cuts of meat for sale. These shops may also sell related products, such as Charcuterie, hot food (using their own meat products), food preparation supplies, baked goods and grocery items. Butcher shops can have a wider variety of animal types, meat cuts and quality of cuts. Additionally, butcher shops may focus on a particular culture, or nationality, of meat production. Some butcher shops, termed "meat delis", may also include a delicatessen.

In the United States and Canada, butcher shops have become less common because of the increasing popularity of supermarkets and warehouse clubs. Many remaining ones are aimed at Hispanic and other immigrants or, more recently, those looking for organic offerings. Supermarkets employ butchers for secondary butchery, but in the United States even that role is diminished with the advent of "case-ready" meat, where the product is packaged for retail sale at the packinghouse or specialized central processing plants.

Hot boning

Hot boning is a process used by butchers to remove the meat from the carcass almost instantly after the animal is slaughtered. This is done to prevent rigor mortis (Chemical changes causing stiffening of the limbs and corpse). Warm meat is often softer and easier to remove from the bone, and hot boning can save refrigeration costs. Cattle, Lamb, and Pigs are the animals most frequently hot boned.

Relevance

Popularity and relevance of the art of butchering have shifted over the years both geographically and historically. Meat demand has risen dramatically over the centuries, but in many Western countries, like the United States, Butcher shops are less prevalent. Meat markets have grown by an average 5.1% per year since 1970, and this is largely due to urbanization and demand. In the United States, meat is mass-produced and then shipped to stores that can sell large amounts quickly and keep the meat frozen. Individual butcher shops with contracts to small farms struggle to keep their prices low enough to match large industries.

Butcher shops are still common in many European and South American countries. In countries like Argentina meat consumption was as high as 97 kilograms per person in 2002, with the vast majority of it being beef.

In asian countries, butchering consists of more "nose to tail" butchering practices, which involves using every part of the animal, including common parts that are typically thrown away in the West, like pig blood, chicken feet, rabbit head, tripe, and tendon. Often these meats are harvested with specialty knives like the Caidao, hankatsu, and honesuki.

Meat departments

In the United States and in other western countries, many customers have become familiar with meat departments in grocery stores and supermarkets rather than butcher shops. Meat departments are used to sell and take in more product faster and more efficiently. Butchers who work in meat departments have tasks like small scale cutting and cleaning, as well as marinating, packaging and ordering shipments of meat. Butchers in meat departments almost never assist in the slaughtering process.

Most meat departments sell fresh (never frozen) cuts of meat. Many butchers are able to manipulate the "bloom" aspect of meat (the bright red color of steaks that looks fresh). When meat is first cut, it will appear purple. This is due to a surplus of myoglobin on the surface; once the meat has first warmed up to room temperature, oxygen is added to the meat to oxidize myoglobin, which produces oxymyoglobin, giving the meat the scarlet red color that consumers indicate as fresh. Through this process, supermarkets and meat departments are able to make meat appear fresh for longer periods of time. This process is referred to as "blooming".

Primal cut

A primal cut is a piece of meat initially separated from the carcass during butchering. Different countries and cultures make these cuts in different ways, and primal cuts also differ between type of carcass. The British, American and French primal cuts all differ in some respects. One notable example with pork is fatback, which in Europe is an important primal cut of pork, but in North America is regarded as trimmings to be used in sausage or rendered into lard. The primal cuts may be sold complete or cut further.

Metaphorical use

See also Butcher (disambiguation)

In various periods and cultures, the term "butcher" has been applied to people who act cruelly to other human beings or slaughter them. For example, Pompey, a prominent Roman general and politician of the first century BC, got the Latin nickname adulescentulus carnifex, translated as "The Teenage Butcher" or "The Butcher Boy", due to brutal treatment of political opponents in the early part of his career. More recently, the Bosslot Serb war criminal Ratko Mladić was nicknamed "the Butcher of the Balkans".

The term can also be used in a semi-humorous or metaphorical way to describe someone whose actions resemble the various skills and methods of a butcher (chopping, cutting, slicing, stabbing etc.) Spanish footballer Andoni Goikoetxea was popularly ascribed the epithet "The Butcher of Bilbao" in recognition of his perceived aggressive style of play and frequent, sometimes injurious, challenges on opposing players.

Notable butchers and butcher shops

• Dario Cecchini
• Lobel's of New York
• Tom Mylan
• Omaha Steaks
• Arthur Orton
• Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors