Several issues ago in the Post, we wrote on butchering as supposed to be a course offered by the TESDA. Then wee received an Email in the Post computer on how beef carcass is to be sliced up into standard cuts. The picture was of a side of beef with the cuts traced out and how the parts would look when each cut is laid out. These are how the standard pieces of beef or pork or mutton or goat meat, would look on a market table. Which means to say; a butcher must know how an animal carcass is to be cut up for sale in the Western Markets. Whoever sent us the picture and information, our thanks

Not only that, the butcher must know the standards followed before meat is offered for sale. In industrialized countries, there are plenty of jobs available. Journeymen, machine shop workers and technicians are on demand. These are high paying jobs and most of the work force is utilized in these fields leaving a dearth of labor in other fields. Those countries take in overseas workers on a contractual basis. Garbage men, mail carriers, cleaners, butcher and relatively low paying jobs are left to migrant workers. Generally, we think of those jobs are low paying but in industrialized countries, those who work with their hands especially when skilled, earn much more than office workers or bank tellers.

When farm workers drift to the factory, the field is clear for those who like farm jobs like butchering. Abattoirs do not slaughter ten or less animals, the butcher them by the herds. Beef cattle, yearling castrated bull and heifers or female cows, which have not undergone calving, are classified beef cattle. Those are killed, skinned and their heads and feet removed. The State or Provincial Meat Inspection Board grades the meat. The carcass is cut lengthwise and stored in refrigerated rooms to age. Only lamb is sold freshly killed since it is tender. After aging, the carcass is cut up into standard slices. This is where skilled butchers are needed. A skilled butcher has to be somewhat like a surgeon. He has to know animal anatomy. The butcher must know how to use surgical tools and he has to know standard cuts. That is why he has to go to a butchers' school. Otherwise, all a man can aspire for is simply being an assistant with the trained butcher acting as a master cutter who will draw the patterns.

Some years ago on a fall when the hunting open season was on, I was invited to a moose hunt by Clarence Ferguson, a Scottish Canadian and Leon Cyr. Aware that a moose hunt is tough and uncomfortable, what with all the black flies around, I declined but offered to share expenses with them. They went and caught a prime specimen of a moose, seven feet high at the shoulder and a wide spread of palm shaped antlers. The catch was shared three ways with mine the smallest.