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Craft and related trades workers · code 7511

Butchers, fishmongers and related food preparers

AI can price the cuts. Boning out a carcass is still knife skill.

AI barely touches any of the eight tasks, from butchering and trimming carcasses and making sausages to weighing and selling to customers.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Butchers, fishmongers and related food preparers slaughter animals, clean, cut and dress meat and fish, remove bones and prepare related food items, or preserve meat, fish and other foods and food products by drying, salting or smoking. Tasks include - (a) slaughtering animals; (b) flaying and trimming carcasses; (c) boning, cutting and dressing meat and fish for sale or further processing; (d) preparing ingredients and making sausages and similar products using chopping, mixing and shaping machines; (e) curing meat, fish and other foods; (f) operating smokehouses or ovens to smoke meat, fish and other foodstuffs; (g) cooking or in other ways preparing meat, fish and related food items for sale; (h) selling meat or fish to customers, including wrapping, weighing and labelling products, and receiving payment. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Butcher - Fish filleter - Fishmonger - Slaughterer Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Shopkeeper - 5221 - Fish processing machine operator - 8160 - Meat processing machine operator - 8160

  • butcher
  • slaughterer
  • fish trimmer
  • fish preparation operator
  • meat cutter
  • meat preparations operator

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

88 / 100

Strongly holds up against AI

Most of this job still needs an actual human. AI would mostly be making the tea.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Not Exposed

37 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 8 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 12.5 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 12.5 = 87.5.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Not Exposed”: None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Pinch of salt: this number is probably too rosy

It only asks what AI software could do, and this job is 59 out of 100 hands-on. A chatbot can't do that part. A robot might, one day, and nobody measures how close that is.

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Butchers, fishmongers and related food preparers 88

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Weighing, labelling and pricing at the till.
  • Stock control and ordering.
  • Traceability and food safety records.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Boning, cutting and dressing meat and fish by hand.
  • Advising customers on cuts and cooking.
  • Judging quality by look, smell and feel.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Supervising automated cutting lines in large plants.
  • Stricter traceability and labelling rules.
  • Selling direct to customers online.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Low

18 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 41 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Some

59 how hands-on

A fair part of this job is hands-on, so robots would be needed for that part, not just software.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less fine handwork and fewer cramped spaces than a typical hands-on job. That clears one hurdle for machines. It doesn't mean machines are doing this work yet.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 36 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

59 How
hands-on
36 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Hands-on, less fiddly work

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, averaged across 4 US jobs .

finger skill 42.9 · hand skill 42.9 · cramped spaces 20.9 · averaged · rule: hands-on 50+ · fiddly under 39.4

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 16, against an average of 13. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 16

    Selling meat or fish to customers, including wrapping, weighing and labelling products, and receiving payment.

    Very Low
  2. 15

    Preparing ingredients and making sausages and similar products using chopping, mixing and shaping machines

    Very Low
  3. 14

    Curing meat, fish and other foods

    Very Low
  4. 14

    Boning, cutting and dressing meat and fish for sale or further processing

    Very Low
  5. 13

    Operating smokehouses or ovens to smoke meat, fish and other foodstuffs

    Very Low
  6. 12

    Cooking or in other ways preparing meat, fish and related food items for sale

    Very Low
  7. 9

    Flaying and trimming carcasses

    Very Low
  8. 8

    Slaughtering animals

    Very Low

8 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
41
AI does it for you
18

Sidekick wins, by 24 points.

How good a match is this?

3 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 3512, 8312, 8313

So, should butchers and fishmongers be worried?

Short answer: not really. Put the kettle on.

No. Every task rates Very Low; the most exposed is selling and weighing at the counter. Large processing plants use more machinery, but butchery, curing and advising customers stay hands-on.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 65 jobs in the “Craft and related trades workers” family, averaging 83. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →