Description
Perform nonroutine or precision functions involving the preparation of large portions of meat. Work may include specialized slaughtering tasks, cutting standard or premium cuts of meat for marketing, making sausage, or wrapping meats. Work typically occurs in slaughtering, meat packing, or wholesale establishments.
- • Remove bones, and cut meat into standard cuts in preparation for marketing.
- • Cut, trim, skin, sort, and wash viscera of slaughtered animals to separate edible portions from offal.
- • Slit open, eviscerate, and trim carcasses of slaughtered animals.
- • Tend assembly lines, performing a few of the many cuts needed to process a carcass.
- • Sever jugular veins to drain blood and facilitate slaughtering.
- • Shave or singe and defeather carcasses, and wash them in preparation for further processing or packaging.
- • Trim, clean, or cure animal hides.
- • Shackle hind legs of animals to raise them for slaughtering or skinning.
- • Skin sections of animals or whole animals.
- • Trim head meat, and sever or remove parts of animals' heads or skulls.
- • Saw, split, or scribe carcasses into smaller portions to facilitate handling.
- • Grind meat into hamburger, and into trimmings used to prepare sausages, luncheon meats, and other meat products.
- • Stun animals prior to slaughtering.
- • Wrap dressed carcasses or meat cuts.
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Agriculture
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O*NET occupational data (work activities, skills, knowledge).
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Last reviewed: Jan 2026
