National Butchers Week – March 3-9, 2025

History of National Butchers Week

Butchery is an ancient trade. We can trace its origin back to the first initial days of livestock domestication in human history. Humans used to be hunter-gatherers. But a butcher does more than just slaughter an animal. Butchery is the art of converting a bloody mess into an edible shape worthy of a poem. The butcher has to slice up the meat and make it presentable to the final consumer.

There is archeological evidence pointing to the fact that humans began eating raw meat around 2,6 million years ago. Eating meat is a trigger for our evolution into an intelligent species. A shift from being vegetarians to meat means better access to higher nutrition in less time. Extra time is spent satisfying one’s curiosities, which may have resulted in a variety of discoveries, such as how to cook food.

The cooked food made it even easier to digest, and soon our brain size got larger, making us the smartest beings on our planet. As we developed further, we started cultivating food and livestock, and civilization flourished in time. The domestication of livestock began around 15,000 years ago.

During the medieval period, butchery became popular. But it was a period of deadly diseases, and butchers had to be very careful about the cleanliness of their rooms. They were also responsible for salting and storing the meat. The advent of refrigeration made it easy to preserve meat for longer periods.