Why I retrained as a butcher

Two years ago, I enrolled on a butchery course. I rather fancied seeing how the sausage was made, and also envisaged taking home handsome pork chops and having an ‘in’ when I needed to order my Christmas turkey. But the amateur course was no longer offered by my local college. So instead of a four-week, two-hour evening course, I signed up for a year-long Level 2 NVQ in craft butchery that involved a lot more anatomical theory and hairnets than I had anticipated.

Butchery work is physically demanding — I wasn’t made for carrying beef forequarters over my shoulder — and comes with the usual risks of a job involving knives and saws. It can be smelly and messy and bloody. It can also be hugely satisfying, but it is definitely not glamorous.

I was one of only two students when I started. The class accommodated up to 12 (and used to be consistently full), but there has been a huge decrease in trained butchers over the past 20 years. Very few supermarkets have in-house butchers, while the growth of supermarkets has driven many butcher’s shops from the high street. The prices at which supermarkets sell meat mean that, in order to compete with the giants, butchers’ wages are extremely low for a highly skilled position.

The national shortage of butchers has now made front-page news: it took jeopardising the Great British Christmas and a potential shortage of pigs-in–blankets to focus our collective minds. Like most supply–chain crises, the issue is complicated. The past few months have seen acute problems compounding existing ones: most recently, the shortage of slaughtermen has created a huge backlog of animals awaiting killing, as has the shortage of butchers to prepare meat for customers. The British Meat Processors Association estimates that the industry is 15,000 workers short, so demand is high for these jobs but not enough people have the skills to do them.