🥩 Butchery and Meat Processing

What this course covers

12 modules · 72 written lessons · about 57,334 words · 360 quiz questions · 12 capstone projects.

Every lesson has learning objectives, worked numbers, a "do this today" task and a knowledge check. Videos are free material made by other people; the written lessons are the course.

The Business of Butchery

The commercial foundation under every cut you make. Covers why the cost per kilogram of saleable meat is always far higher than the price you paid, who your customers actually are and what they will pay for, how to buy live animals and carcasses without buying someone else's shrink, how to survey your own market instead of importing assumptions, the records that keep you legal and solvent, and how to size your first investment against unreliable power. All currency figures are indicative USD and must be replaced with three local quotations.

1. Where the Money Actually Is
2. Your Customers and What They Buy
3. Buying Animals and Carcasses
4. Reading Your Local Market
5. The Records That Keep You Legal and Solvent
6. Deciding Your Scale and Starting Capital

Open module 1 →

Meat Science Fundamentals

What is actually happening inside a carcass between the killing floor and the counter, and why it decides tenderness, colour, shelf life and yield. Covers rigor mortis and the glycogen to lactic acid conversion, pH decline and ultimate pH, recognising and using DFD and PSE meat, the cold shortening trade-off that sits at the heart of every chilling decision, what customers see when they look at colour, and where your weight goes as drip. Where a figure could not be verified, the lesson names the document to obtain rather than filling the gap.

1. What Happens After Slaughter
2. pH Decline and Ultimate pH
3. DFD and PSE Meat
4. Cold Shortening and Why Chilling Speed Matters
5. Colour, Bloom and What Customers See
6. Water Holding Capacity and Drip Loss

Open module 2 →

The Cold Chain

Cold is the cheapest and most powerful control a butcher owns, and the one most often broken. This module covers how a carcass is chilled without toughening it, what temperature each product must be held at, how freezing and thawing actually work, what the danger zone means in hours rather than slogans, how to move meat without a refrigerated vehicle, and how to monitor and record temperature so that the control can be proved. Two degrees is not a rounding error; at chilled storage it is half your shelf life, and shelf life is money.

1. Chilling the Carcass
2. Storage Temperatures by Product
3. Freezing and Thawing
4. The Temperature Danger Zone
5. Transport and Delivery
6. Monitoring and Recording Temperature

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Pathogens and What Controls Them

The organisms that make meat dangerous, what each one needs in order to grow, and which single control actually stops it. Covers how contamination gets onto meat in the first place, the four families of bacteria that cause most meat-borne illness, the one that produces a poison cooking cannot destroy, and the practical disciplines that break the chain of infection in a small butchery. Every control in a butchery works by pushing one variable outside an organism's range, and this module teaches which variable to push.

1. How Meat Becomes Contaminated
2. E. coli O157:H7 and Salmonella
3. Listeria monocytogenes
4. Campylobacter and Clostridium
5. Staphylococcus aureus and Toxins
6. What Actually Breaks the Chain of Infection

Open module 4 →

Hygiene, Sanitation and HACCP

The prerequisite disciplines that every food-safety system stands on, and the plan that turns them into something you can prove. Covers the personal hygiene and staff health rules that prevent a toxin failure, the difference between cleaning and sanitising and why the order cannot be shortened, water and waste and premises, the physical separation that stops cross-contamination, how to build a HACCP plan for a small butchery, and the records and verification that make it real. A HACCP plan built on a dirty premises with unsafe water is a lie on paper.

1. Personal Hygiene and Staff Rules
2. Cleaning Versus Sanitising
3. Water, Waste and Premises
4. Cross-Contamination Control
5. Building a HACCP Plan
6. Records, Verification and Audit

Open module 5 →

Slaughter, Dressing and Inspection

What happens between the live animal and the hanging carcass decides the colour, the shelf life, the pH and the safety of everything you will later cut and sell. This module covers pre-slaughter handling and the money lost to dark cutting, the principles of stunning and bleeding, hygienic dressing and evisceration, what ante-mortem and post-mortem inspection actually are and who is legally allowed to perform them, how condemned material and offal must be handled, and why slaughtering outside a licensed facility is the fastest way to lose a butchery business. Every slaughter-specific parameter and every condemnation criterion in this field is set by national law, so this module teaches the principle and names the authority you must ask.

1. Pre-Slaughter Handling and Animal Welfare
2. Stunning and Bleeding
3. Dressing and Evisceration
4. Ante-Mortem and Post-Mortem Inspection
5. Condemnation and Offal Handling
6. Legal Slaughter and Why Backyard Killing Ends Businesses

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Beef, Sheep and Goat Cutting

How to turn a red meat carcass into saleable product without giving away weight, tenderness or safety. Covers reading a carcass before the first cut, the beef primal breakdown, what each retail cut is actually for and how it must be cooked, sheep and goat breakdown including where the published data runs out, safe and accurate knife, handsaw and bandsaw work, and the yield and trim discipline that decides whether the carcass made money. Every yield figure here is published; every price is yours to establish locally.

1. Carcass Structure and How to Read It
2. Primal Breakdown of Beef
3. Retail Cuts and What Each One Is For
4. Sheep and Goat Breakdown
5. Knife, Saw and Bandsaw Skills
6. Yield, Trim and Waste Control

Open module 7 →

Pork and Poultry Cutting

How to break a pig carcass and a bird into products that sell, and how to know what each one truly cost you. Covers the pork primals and the retail cuts that come off them, the salt and nitrite discipline behind bacon and gammon, poultry portioning including the frame that most butchers throw away, when deboning adds value and when it destroys it, the cross-contamination controls that raw poultry demands, and a species-by-species margin comparison built from published yield figures. Every yield and safety figure here is sourced; every price is yours to establish locally.

1. Pork Primals and Retail Cuts
2. Bacon and Gammon Preparation
3. Poultry Portioning
4. Deboning and Adding Value
5. Handling Poultry Safely
6. Comparing Margins Across Species

Open module 8 →

Mincing, Sausage and Emulsified Products

Mincing is the operation that turns a low-risk cut into the highest-risk product on your counter, and sausage making is where a butchery either earns real margin from trim or quietly loses money on it. This module covers why minced meat needs colder storage and hotter cooking than the muscle it came from, how fat, lean and temperature decide whether a sausage binds or breaks, what binders and extenders legitimately do and what must be declared, and how to cost a formulation with your own weights instead of a supplier's promise. Every price is indicative and must be replaced with local figures.

1. Why Mince Is the Highest-Risk Product You Sell
2. Fat, Lean and the Mince Specification
3. Fresh Sausage Manufacture
4. Emulsified Products and Polony
5. Binders, Extenders and Honest Labelling
6. Costing a Sausage Formulation

Open module 9 →

Curing, Smoking and Drying

Cured, smoked and dried products carry the highest margins in a small butchery and the highest legal and safety exposure. This module covers what curing actually does to bacteria, why nitrite limits are national law rather than craft preference, how salt and water activity preserve meat and where they fail, what smoking does and does not achieve, and why biltong is the single largest safety gap in this course. It ends with an honest decision framework for whether your butchery should be making these products at all yet.

1. What Curing Actually Does
2. Nitrite and Nitrate: Function and Legal Limits
3. Salt, Water Activity and Preservation
4. Smoking Methods and Safety
5. Biltong and Dried Meat: The Real Risks
6. Deciding Whether to Make Cured Products At All

Open module 10 →

Packaging, Labelling and Display

The last metre between your knife and your customer's hand, where good meat is most often lost. Covers what wrapping, vacuum and modified atmosphere packaging actually do and where each one is dangerous, why meat colour is a selling tool and a diagnostic instrument at the same time, how to run a display cabinet to a temperature rule instead of a habit, what a label must legally carry and why that answer is national and not international, how to set and defend a date mark you cannot buy from a book, and what to do on the day a customer brings meat back.

1. Wrapping, Vacuum and Modified Atmosphere Packaging
2. Colour, Bloom and What Customers Buy With Their Eyes
3. Display Cabinet Management
4. Labelling: What the Law Wants
5. Date Marking and Stock Rotation
6. Complaints, Withdrawals and Recalls

Open module 11 →

Costing, Yield and Running the Shop

The commercial bookend to the course, worked entirely on your own numbers rather than on published averages. Covers how to run a yield test on your own carcasses and build your own yield figures, how to construct a price list that carries every cost and survives a change in the buying price, where waste, shrink and theft actually leave the business and how to measure each one, how to manage cash and buying rhythm against a cold chain and an unreliable power supply, how to train and delegate without losing control of your food-safety records, and how to test whether a second shop, a wholesale round or a processing line is worth doing. Every currency figure is indicative USD and unverified.

1. Yield Testing Your Own Carcasses
2. Building a Price List That Survives
3. Managing Waste, Shrink and Theft
4. Cash Flow and Buying Rhythm
5. Staff, Training and Delegation
6. Growing: Second Shop, Wholesale or Processing

Open module 12 →