… the butcher, or what they call butcher over here.
A butcher, where I come from, is a place where you can buy fresh meat, no matter if it’s cut already or not. Most butchers have all kind of meat, any time of the year, any day of the week.
So, I thought that over here would be the same; wrong!!!
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| example of butchers in NL |
Apparently, they have some meat already prepared for people to take home; like pork, beef and chicken. These are the common things available. Now the best part: depending on the season, they might have some other meat, like rabbit, turkey, etc. This is already surprising to me; are the rabbits seasonal over here? Can’t they breed them throughout the whole year?!!…
Moving on, there’s something even more brilliant!! You can’t buy, for example, a rabbit at the butchers!! LOL
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| example of butchers in Porty-land |
They have rabbit legs to sell but not the rest of the rabbit! I mean…. what about the rest?!?! Are rabbits born only with legs in this country?! hahaha Of course not; if you want to get it, you need to order in advance (wtf?!) and they will ask at their supplier.
I could not believe this, but it’s the way things work here!
I was as surprised by this as the staff at the butchers were when asked “what do you do with the rest of the rabbit?? They don’t have only legs…”
Sorry, but this is just ridiculous (if we wanna stay on the polite-side)!
Anyway, it’s nice living in this country…. just a bit too different from down south Europe! 😉
B.
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Well, in fact it's quite simpel. Most of the 'butchers' overhere are not equipped and/or allowed to slaughter animals. There are some butchers that do it thenselves but they have to comply to very strict regulations and hygiene. All this is to prevent the trade in questionable meat. You could say that here in the Netherlands basically every piece of meat has to be retraceable to the source.
The normal 'quality butchers' go to the slaughterhouse where they choose the big chunks of meat which they process themselves in their shops into all kinds of meat products.
So it's all about regulations and ofcourse money!
Adri.
Btw, I used to be a real butcher myself in my younger days!