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There are over 200 men and women in The Butcher’s Guild. They are the cutters and slingers who buy whole animals straight from the farm. They insist that their meat is never doped with antibiotics nor hormones. And, in a defiant stance against industrial meatpacking plants that slice through as many as 34,000 pigs a day, these butchers offer customers a conscientious product prepared with skill.

In 2009, Marissa Guggiana, author of
Primal Cuts, and Tia Harrison, co-owner of the butcher shop Avedano’s Holly Park Market and co-owner of Sociale restaurant in San Francisco, decided to create a community of meat rebels. They wanted to build an organization where butchers could share their craft and vision for a better meat system.

Since then, membership has more than doubled each year. The Guild’s annual fall conference in Napa, California-the group’s main event-pulls in crowds for expert instruction, tastings, and the chance to talk shop with the best in the trade.

“The meat industry has been so destructive. But that means that it has the power to be hugely transformative, too,” says Guggiana. “Butchers are the fulcrum point between farmers and consumers. When a butcher decides to buy from a farm, they can transform a farmer’s entire business and influence how that farmer raises his animals, because they’re in touch with consumer demand.”        

America’s 140,000 butchers are the closest that many customers will ever get to a farm. From behind the meat counter, they have the opportunity to teach people as much about animal husbandry and rural life as they do about how to cook a roast.

“Butchers can be such a force for good, if they’re awake,” says Guggiana.

It’s that commitment to being awake that the Guild stresses in its mandatory oath. To join, butchers (a designation that includes chefs who break down whole animals in their restaurants and farmers who process their own livestock) must vow to have a “good heart, source, hand and voice.