A butcher is a person who may slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat, or participate within any combination of these three tasks.

In the industrialized world, slaughterhouses use butchers to slaughter the animals, performing one or a few of the steps repeatedly as specialists on a semi-automated disassembly line.

Historically, primary and secondary butchery were performed in the same establishment, but the advent of methods of preservation (vacuum packing) and low cost transportation has largely separated them.

[6] Supermarkets employ butchers for secondary butchery, but in the United States even that role is diminished with the advent of "case-ready" meat, where the product is packaged for retail sale at the packinghouse or specialized central processing plants.

In various periods and cultures, the term "butcher" has been applied to people who act cruelly to other human beings or slaughter them.

The term can also be used in a semi-humorous or metaphorical way to describe someone whose actions resemble the various skills and methods of a butcher (chopping, cutting, slicing, stabbing etc.)

Spanish footballer Andoni Goikoetxea was popularly ascribed the epithet "The Butcher of Bilbao" in recognition of his perceived aggressive style of play and frequent, sometimes injurious, challenges on opposing players.