Butcher can’t use knife ‘for his own safety’

A butcher told a supermarket customer he was not allowed to use a knife to de-bone a joint of lamb because of “health and safety”. The white-coated meat counter official at the Sainsbury’s store in Colchester Avenue, Cardiff, said he had been told he could not cut up the joint for his own safety.

Customer John Wilkinson, 41, who had hoped to have the lamb shoulder de-boned for a barbecue said he found the experience “hysterical”. The public relations consultant, from Penylan, said: “He’s a very experienced butcher. He looked really embarrassed about it. He has clearly been doing it for years. I was in disbelief.”



He added: “It was just hysterical. I went to the customer service desk and the woman there just kept saying it was for the butcher’s own safety.” Mr Wilkinson said he had used the same butcher at the supermarket several times before and had chatted to him.

“He has been doing it for 30 years and we were chatting recently about how he had been teaching all the young butchers how to cut the meat and joints.” A spokesman for Sainsbury’s said it had a training policy on the butcher counter and not all staff were trained to use a knife for that specific task."