Training Young Killers: How Butcher Education Might Be Damaging Young People

The job of butcher requires the routinized mass killing of nonhuman animals and has damaging mental health consequences for individuals and negative impacts on society. However, vocational training for butchers is part of many educational systems in the European Union where teenagers can start training from the age of 15. In this article, I explore the effects of the violent content of this training on young people and its relation to the context of their developmental period—adolescence. In addition, I examine society's paradoxical stance on violence where it is both abhorred and sanctioned as well as normalized in various employment contexts.