I’m sorry but I can’t take you seriously if you’re bringing up mad cow disease in this discussion. Prions don’t spread because of butchers, they spread because of bone-and-meal feed. You know, stuff fed to a cow while it’s still alive, before it gets slaughtered. No amount of sanitary practice is going to help if you’re feeding prions to the animals because that’s just not how sanitation works.

And yes, small scale butchers slaughtering cows for a few local farmers and their customers buying whole carcasses have very different sanitary standards than an industrial meat packing plant. I sign a waiver every time.

> It’s not dirty or unsanitary by any means

How did you get from that to “this butcher was standing in his insufficiently cleaned butchering room”? Whatever personal bugbear you have, I want nothing to do with it.