Frequently Asked Questions

​All of our classes are taught by experienced butchers, chefs, and other meat artisans from Portland and beyond. Some are self-taught, while others studied at culinary schools, taught for decades at agricultural schools, or learned from knowledgeable mentors. Each instructor will have a slightly different regional style, be it American, French, Italian, Japanese, or a unique amalgamation of influences. One of the PMC’s many strengths is that with each teacher students study under, they gain a new perspective on the animal in front of them. To read about our instructors, click here.

​The classes are all hands-on unless otherwise noted. Most of our classes are either three or four hours, although we do occasionally offer day-long or weekend-long classes. Typically, in a four-hour butchery class the instructor gives an hour-long demo to no more than 12 students. Then the group is split up into two, with each group in charge of breaking down their own half or whole animal. Instructors guide each group through the process, but largely put the onus on the students to do all the cutting. For cooking or charcuterie classes, the instructor will potentially demo throughout the class but will also encourage students to do the bulk of the work to produce sausages, for instance, or other products. The last hour of the class is typically spent eating charcuterie and discussing what students just learned. These conversations often lead to fascinating debates on the best way to source meat from local farmers, or the truth behind slaughterhouses, or the consequences of factory farming, and the ethics of eating meat.

​You are welcome to bring your own tools, but it is not required. We provide everything a students needs to succeed in our classes.  The only thing we ask you to bring is an apron. If you don't have one, we always have PMC aprons for sale at our classes. Our handsome, sturdy aprons, printed with the PMC logo, are made of 100% raw cotton canvas and are hand-sewn by the folks at Seattle-based Raw Materials. We currently sell them for $45. Prices are subject to change. 

​“Slaughter” refers to the harvesting (i.e. killing) of animals for consumption. “Butchery” refers to the act of processing the meat once the animal has been slaughtered. In other words, when you are butchering an animal you are parsing out the pork chops from the hams and the belly from the shoulder roasts. We do offer some classes that teach students how to both slaughter and butcher an animal. But, typically, if a class involves slaughtering animals we will indicate that in the class title, as in “Rabbit Slaughter & Butchery.” If a class just teaches students how to butcher an animal this will also be indicated in the title, as in “Basic Pig Butchery for Home Charcuterie.”

Typically, the majority of meat used in class goes home with the students, unless part of the class instruction involves cooking the meat and eating it at the end. For our butchery classes, students own the meat and process it themselves, thus acting as their own meat processor or butcher shop. Depending on the size and number of animals, and the size of the class, the students can go home with anywhere from 10-15 pounds of meat (in the case of a lamb class) to 20-30 pounds of meat (in the case of a pork class) or even a bit more (in the case of a beef class). For fish, duck, rabbit, or chicken butchery classes, students typically go home with the fish, animal, or bird that they butcher themselves. For cooking/charcuterie classes, students often go home with what they produce in class (in the case of sausage making), but they might also prepare everything in class for a meal that they all eat at the end of class.  Each class description usually indicates what the take-home perks are.

​Until the PMC finds the perfect spot to call its permanent home, we are and always have been a traveling butchery school. Our goal is to prove that butchery can happen just about anywhere with the right tools and temperatures. We most often teach classes in commercial kitchens around Portland, and we certainly have a few favorite, regular spaces we work out of, but we have also taught classes at wineries, restaurants, and farms. Once you sign up for a class, we let you know where it will be held. Almost always the classes are held in a central Portland location. Currently, the majority of our classes take place at Elder Hall in NE Portland.

​Often, but not always, students in each class are purchasing live animals from small farmers (with the help of the PMC, who acts as a liaison between the farmers and the students). Because the students are the owners of the live animals, and they will only be using the meat from the live animals for their own personal consumption (and not reselling it to other consumers), the owners of those live animals have the right to process it themselves. Or, in the case of the PMC, students have the right to hire the PMC to show them how to process the meat themselves. The PMC essentially acts as a private instructor to private citizens; we are neither a meat processor nor a meat packager. For some classes, the PMC is purchasing USDA-slaughtered carcasses for classes, though we are always specific and picky about which farmers those carcasses came from and where they were slaughtered.  

Typically, if we are going to work with a farm, we like to send someone from the Meat Collective family out to visit the farm and ask the farmer/s a lot of questions. Our questions are about breed, feed, pasture, slaughter, fat, meat, and everything in between. We don't believe there is one way to farm, but we do believe there are a lot of ways not to farm. We like to work with farmers who think hard about this stuff. We want our farmers to raise animals in such a way that the animals' true characteristics shine. In other words, ample space to move around however they need to, food that their stomachs are built to digest​, and the company of other animals like them are all very important. We like to work with farmers who see the value in heritage breeds and in growing animals out longer than is considered "normal." We also want our farmers to care about not only the life of those animals, but also their deaths. We want our farmers to work with slaughterhouses that do not cause pain or suffering during the slaughter process. If possible, we prefer on-farm slaughter. We want farmers who care about the end product, and understand that everything they do during that animal's life effects that. In the end, the meat has to look healthy and taste good. 

Though not all of our farmers are Animal Welfare Approved or Certified Humane, we tend to work with farmers who, even if they aren't officially certified, follow the basic tenets and standards of these two organizations. We also think that Humaneitarian does a great job at explaining what "humane" can mean, and the various levels of "humane" choices we have as consumers. Our philosophy is nearly identical.

We are also a ​Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch partner, and utilize their suggestions and guidelines for purchasing sustainable fish for our fish and seafood classes.  

We work with a lot of different farms and wish we had a reason to work with more. However we only do a few classes a month. Therefore, when we can't provide a farm we like with ongoing orders, or we can't find the time to visit them, we like to send them to our Switchboard, where plenty of our students are eagerly looking for farmers just like them to purchase meat from.  

​We typically reserve two spots in our pig, lamb, and beef butchery classes for people who just want to pay for instruction but do not want to take home meat. The cost for instruction is usually $150. This is not an option for any of our other classes.  Contact us directly if you are interested.

​No.  We tend to offer the following classes on a regular (once-a-month, or once-every-other-month) basis: Basic Pig Butchery, Basic Lamb Butchery, Basic Sausage Making, Basic Duck Butchery.  But we also offer the following classes at least once a quarter: Basic Fish Butchery & Cookery, Intermediate Sausage Making, Basic Beef Butchery, Introduction to Meat Cookery, Basic Rabbit Butchery & Charcuterie, Chicken Slaughter, Rabbit Slaughter, Slim Janes and Jerky, Chicken Butchery Two-Ways, multi-day Italian and French Butchery series with guest instructors,  Hunting Workshops, Venison Butchery, Basic Pate Making, Emulsified Sausage, Full-Day Whole Hog Butchery and Charcuterie, Intermediate Ham Class, Intermediate Salami, two-day Charcuterie, and more. To get a better idea about how we approach our curriculum, click here.

We are always looking for knowledgeable, talented butchers, chefs, fishmongers, urban homesteaders, hunters, farms, and anyone else who is well-informed and thoughtful about our current state of meat production and consumption, who likes working with people, and who is a good communicator. If you are interested in teaching, drop us an email, tell us about your past work experience and training and why you are interested in working with the PMC. Please also include your résumé. We usually like to "try out" potential instructors by going to their place of work and getting a "lesson" from them. Or we have them come to one of our classes to observe and help out with the students a few times. 

Our nonprofit arm, the Meat Collective Alliance is always looking for interns and volunteers. The Portland Meat Collective, also, occasionally, offers a work/trade situation by allowing a person who has taken a class before to come and "audit" the class again in exchange for helping us to set up, wrap meat, and clean up. We also hire people as paid class assistants. We prefer to hire people who have taken a class from us before and know our game, but mostly we are looking for people who have kitchen experience, are quick learners, and also passionate about the PMC project.  If you are interested in PMC audit or paid assistant opportunities or Meat Collective Alliance internships or volunteer positions, email us and tell us about yourself and why you are interested.

​Yes. Email us at info@pdxmeat.com for more information.

​Click on the class you are interested in and you will find price, location, time, date, and class description, along with a link to register.  Click on that link, pull out your credit card and pay using Paypal (you don’t need a Paypal account to do so).  Once you pay, you are registered and your spot is reserved. If you wish to apply a gift certificate, there is an option for that as well.

​We must commit to buying the animals from farmers about a week before, if not weeks before, a class takes place. We do not want to purchase a pig, or several pigs, depending on the class size, without knowing that there are students who will pay for it. This way we can ensure that the farmer will be paid when we request the animals for the classes. Since it’s technically the students who are purchasing the animals directly from the farmer, the students have to be able to pool their money ahead of time in order to do so.

​We are happy to put you on a waitlist for an already scheduled class that is sold out, in case someone drops out at the last minute and we need to fill that spot. Just email us and let us know your name and which class you want to be waitlisted for. We'll contact you if a spot opens up, which they often do. We do not keep waitlists for classes that are not yet scheduled and which have not yet been announced on our website.  In other words, if you write us and ask if you can be put on a waitlist for whenever the next sausage class is going to be scheduled, we can't help you. 

We are not sorry that all our classes are sold out, but we are sorry you have had trouble snagging a spot in one. We announce a new class schedule about every two months. This is why, typically, you will see classes for two to three months at a time on our website. In other words, we typically announce our Jan/Feb schedule at the end of November. And our March/April schedule at the end of January. You get the idea. If you want to snag a spot in our classes before they sell out, sign up for our newsletter. We announce new class schedules​ to people on that list first, before we announce new classes on social media or anywhere else. To sign up for our newsletter, go to our homepage and scroll down until you see the box that says "Get Our Newsletter." 

​Yes! Please click here for more information.

​We are currently working on developing a scholarship program with the help of our nonprofit arm, the Meat Collective Alliance. In the meantime, if someone really wants to take a class, but just can't afford to prepay for it in one chunk, we do offer payment plans. However, the class must be paid for in full one week before the day of the class or you will lose your spot in the class. Email us for more information at info@pdxmeat.com. 

​Our classes greatly depend on enough students pooling their money together to purchase the animals needed for the class. While we do the purchasing for you, you prepay for the purchase because we have to order the animals ahead of time. If everyone dropped out of the class at the last minute, you are still technically the owners of those animals. Since we are a traveling butchery school, we’ve nowhere to put the animals for safekeeping. For this reason, we must have a refund policy that covers the cost of the animals no matter if a student can make it or not. If you wish to still get your share of meat, even though you can’t make the class, we can arrange for that, but you must tell us before the day of the class, otherwise your share of meat will go to the other students. Our policy is as follows:

If students cancel 10 or more days before the class date: 100% will be refunded.

If students cancel 6 to 9 days before the class date: 50% will be refunded.

If students cancel with 5 days or less notice before the class date: 0% will be refunded.

That's really putting a lot of faith in modern America's amount of free time! The answer to your question is a resounding No. We might be crazy, but we are not trying to put all the butcher shops in town out of business. The majority of our students are not about to start butchering and slaughtering their own animals. Here's what our form of education does: it makes consumers begin to understand and value all the work that goes into getting good, clean, fair meat to the table. We are creating a more informed consumer base that is willing to pay for that kind of meat and who appreciate all the work that butchers and charcuterie makers do. Trust us. We're creating more business for butcher shops. Our instructors, many of whom own or work for butcher shops, understand this. They see it as a marketing tool more than anything else. We might also be inspiring more consumers to annoy their local butchers by playing "Stump the Butcher" and peppering them with lots of questions, but, hey, it's good to always be challenged, right?

​This is a complicated economic question. A big old can of worms, really. But here's the 4-1-1 from our perspective. By distancing ourselves from the processes by which meat gets to our tables and insisting that meat is a god-given right that we should be able to eat in large quantities as a main course for breakfast, lunch and dinner, we've allowed cheap, less-than nutritious meat to be produced in massive quantities at the cost of our health, our environment, and the lives of many animals. If our classes convince people to buy better meat at a higher price and eat less of it—because the meat is more expensive, yes, but also because the meat is more flavorful, more nutritious, and thus more satiating—is that a bad thing? Butchers will adapt when they need to, or, better yet, when they see the value in this kind of change and simply want to get on board. That's how supply and demand and marketplace evolution works. (Or, butchers might just start to put signs in their windows that say "Pastured Pork for Sale!" but keep selling the same factory-farmed pork they've been selling which will be perfectly legal because there are no regulations stating what "pastured" means, but that's another story, about labeling and policy, so don't get us started—a can of worms, yes.) We're simplifying of course. We're also being very idealistic. There's also probably an economics professor reading this right now who wants to get us all in a classroom, swat us over our heads, and give us a lesson in microeconomics. But we hope you get our gist.

Also, what's with all these questions about the plight of butcher shops? We hardly even have any real and true locally-owned butcher shops anymore, and so far as we can see, those shops are really good at adapting to the marketplace because they have to be in order to keep existing, but that's another can of worms too. And we'll leave it closed for now.

Our students come from diverse political, social and economic backgrounds. Men and women. Young and old. People from around the world. Everyone comes to our classes for a different reason, but they all come to learn. We also find that learning this stuff means falling down a kind of rabbit hole. The rabbit hole makes folks ask questions they weren't asking before. And so, by the end of class, we've got farmers and eaters and doctors and bike messengers and truck drivers and hunters and students and conservatives and liberals and single moms and great grandpas enjoying each other's company over a meal of salami or porchetta, often debating food politics or swapping butcher shop advice or trading hunting stories. In other words, everyone gets along and everyone shares a passion for and curiosity about food. We hope you'll join us.