If everyone had to slaughter critters for their meat, there would be a lot more vegetarians.

[matt819]

12. Any sociologists or anthropologists here?

Interesting question.

Let's go back, say, to the early days of the industrial revolution. More people in urban areas, fewer hunters/gatherers.

Putting aside the wealthy folks, who could afford to pay people they didn't see to kill and prepare their animals.

But lower and middle classes? What was their meat consumption? For beef and pigs, probably the off cuts and offal. My guess is that that they purchased these, not killed them. Same for those special occasions when they sprang for some other cut. Chicken? Maybe they were all still close to the time when they had to kill to eat, so they killed when they could afford to, or purchased whole chickens and related animals live and slaughtered them. But people are people. Not everyone could do that. So I would suspect that one person or family in a community became the local butcher. The people could still eat meat - when they could afford it - but didn't have to slaughter the animals themselves. Fish was effectively "free," though I'm sure the government and landowners figured out a way to charge for the opportunity to fish. And preparing fish was - and still is? - probably not as gag worthy as dealing with poultry or beef.

I'll bet a quick search on Amazon would turn up any number of books on how we came to eat meat, etc. once we stopped hunting.