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Craft and related trades workers · code 7511

Butchers, fishmongers and related food preparers

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

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 37 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • 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.

87.5
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 12.5 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 12.5 = 87.5

That's the whole sum, and you can check it against the ILO's study.

58.9
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 4 US jobs

35.6
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 42.9 · hand skill 42.9 · cramped spaces 20.9 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · fiddly under 39.4 Hands-on, less fiddly work

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.

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 0.7-work-setting measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

This number is probably too high

This score only looks at AI tools like chatbots. It doesn't look at robots at all — and this job rates 58.9 out of 100 for how hands-on it is, which is exactly where robots come in.

Have a look at the tasks below and judge for yourself. The ILO scored them low because a chatbot can't do them. Whether a machine with hands could is a different question, and we can't answer it yet.

The tasks behind the score

The score is the average of these. A job is really a bundle of tasks, and an average can hide how uneven that bundle is.

The task AI could do most of scores 16.3, while the average is 12.5. A big gap means some of this job is wide open to AI and some of it barely at all. That's quite different from a job where everything sits somewhere in the middle, even when the averages match.

  1. 16.3

    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. 14.3

    Curing meat, fish and other foods

    Very Low
  4. 13.5

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

    Very Low
  5. 12.8

    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. 8.8

    Flaying and trimming carcasses

    Very Low
  8. 7.8

    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 0.7-work-setting

Helped, or replaced?

The score above can't tell a tool that makes you faster from one that does the task instead of you. Jobs and Skills Australia looked at those two things separately, and this is their result, matched to this job.

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

AI helps you
41.3
AI does it for you
17.7

Helping wins by 23.6 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 3512, 8312, 8313

Compared with similar jobs

There are 65 jobs in the “Craft and related trades workers” group, averaging 83.4. This one is above that.