A meat cutter prepares primal cuts into a variety of smaller cuts intended for sale in a retail environment. The duties of a meat cutter largely overlap those of the butcher, but butchers tend to specialize in pre-sale processing (i.e., reducing carcasses to primal cuts), whereas meat cutters further cut and process the primal cuts per individual customer request.
In the U.S., the job title of "butcher" has been mostly replaced in corporate storefronts in the last two decades after customer trends showed that modern, particularly urban, customers increasingly associated the term with animal slaughter and unsanitary conditions (regardless of the condition of the store). With the advent of off-premises, pre-packaged, supermarket meat, many supermarkets now avoid mention of either cutting or butchering and simply call their meat cutters "Meat Department Associates", or similar. In the U.K., the term butcher is still used to describe a person who offers for retail sale meat ready for cooking by the customer. They will also prepare cuts, joints, etc., for the customer. Most U.K. corporate retailers still use the term butcher for their meat department operatives.
