Mourning the loss of the family run butcher

In the age of AI, the role of the butcher remains as valuable as it was when, as a little girl, I visited the local butcher with my grandmother.

Now I find myself lamenting the disappearance of the local, family run butcher: the place that guaranteed the best cuts, offered friendly advice on how to make the Sunday roast or grill cubed short rib, and slipped slices of cured meat to children clinging to their mothers’ skirts.

As I mourn what communities have lost, replaced by banks of fridges filled with precut beef in big supermarkets and by online orders delivered in white polystyrene boxes, I am struck by how much respect one gains for this humble profession when asking AI, “What is the purpose of the butcher?” The butcher prepares meat in a highly sanitised environment to ensure fresh, high quality cuts every day. Yet this industry and profession will also be transformed by AI.

A day might come in South Africa, as is already the case in many large, industrialised countries, when automated robots perform the precision cutting of carcasses with the butcher’s specialised tools, while the butcher supervises the technology and serves customers. In the process, butchers may lose the skill of handling sharp knives and of knowing exactly where to make each incision in the muscle meat.

Even as the future butcher’s role evolves to embrace AI and automation, which I suspect is still a very long way off in South Africa, South Africans will continue to hunger for braaied steak and chops. The ritual of the braai, synonymous with being South African regardless of culture or race, revives my nostalgia for the local, family run butcher who knows exactly how I like my brisket cut. That knowledge is built on a relationship formed through weekly visits for the essential protein that must be on the plate at supper. Can anyone remember when Fish Hoek had a local, family run butcher? If so, please let me know.

What other important traditions are we losing in the name of “progress”? What can we do to preserve traditional trades?