This year has been littered with news of various meat producers and suppliers being found guilty of selling horsemeat under the guise of beef. High profile suppliers such as high street stores and well-known supermarkets have been implicated in the scandal. This has led to public confidence in store-bought meat falling to an all-time low. The public are falling all over themselves to make a return to basics and begin butchering their own meats.

The Food Standards Agency have investigated a wide range of suppliers and producers to determine whether or not there are traces of horse meat in their products. Having found products containing horsemeat labelled as beef in almost all stage of the preparation process; the trust of the public has dropped by more than 60%. Small butchers and farm shops are benefiting as they are deemed to be more trustworthy than larger companies.

Butcher Equipment is proving more popular than ever as people are more concerned about the food that they are serving for themselves and their family. Many people believe that they cannot trust the meat products that they are buying unless they know for definite where it is sourced from and its origins. This means that they are having to butcher their own meats.

Many of these people are enjoying the savings of preparing cuts of meat from large joints. Being able to produce a large number of different cuts from a large joint of meat can be incredibly cost effective as well as reassuring.

This has also brought forth a rise in popularity of butchery classes. People are beginning to butcher their own foods and many will need to know how to do so effectively and safely. These classes teach the wannabe butchers how to comprehensively produce different cuts of meat as well as full and sufficient health and safety. Knowledge of correct butcher knife use is incredibly important to the would-be butchers if they want to progress in a compliant manner.

Other pieces of equipment such as steel sharpeners and butcher blocks are introduced to the butchery class. These pieces of equipment enable the butcher to comprehensively produce the cuts of meat that they desire.

As public confidence continues to fall, we are returning more and more to the hunter gatherer existence of our predecessors.