Meat cutter
A meat cutter prepares primal cuts into a variety of smaller cuts intended for sale in a retail environment. The duties of a meat cutter largely overlap those of the butcher, but butchers tend to specialize in pre-sale processing, whereas meat cutters further cut and process the primal cuts per individual customer request.
In the U.S., the job title of "butcher" has been mostly replaced in corporate storefronts in the last two decades after customer trends showed that modern, particularly urban, customers increasingly associated the term with animal slaughter and unsanitary conditions. With the advent of off-premises, pre-packaged, supermarket meat, many supermarkets now avoid mention of either cutting or butchering and simply call their meat cutters "Meat Department Associates", or similar. In the U.K., the term butcher is still used to describe a person who offers for retail sale meat ready for cooking by the customer. They will also prepare cuts, joints, etc., for the customer. Most U.K. corporate retailers still use the term butcher for their meat department operatives.
Overview
A meat cutter is responsible to prepare standard cuts of meat to be sold in either a self-serve or specialty counter. In the UK the term used for retail meat cutter, is still butcher. Retail meat cutters are found in a customer-oriented, retail environment. This can be anything from a small family-owned meat shop to a large international supermarket chain. Meat cutters are a registered trade. Industrial meat cutters are found in production-oriented facilities, and generally perform fewer tasks, but repeatedly.The term "meat cutters" typically deal with "primal" cuts - segments of the carcass broken down into smaller pieces to make them easier to handle.