Reverence for Life

“The butcher is a good butcher who loves the animals.”

Karl Ludwig Schweisfurth, master butcher and former meat producer, put this seemingly paradoxical guiding principle into practice.  He did it in a way that it’s possible to look and say with a clear conscience: “We have to kill in order to live, we live from other life”.

His goal: to create holistic ecological conditions and to give animals a good life appropriate to their species. He got out of the meat industry and founded the Herrmannsdorfer Landwerkstätten. His workshops have since become a model for sustainable agriculture and food production.

But that alone was not enough for him. According to Schweisfurth, the “growing and harvesting” of meat must once again become a coherent process that can be looked at and understood. In the midst of his symbiotic farming, which allows the animals to live freely with and from nature, Karl Ludwig Schweisfurth organises a slaughter festival. In the old artisanal tradition, he shows how the animal can be brought to its death in a mindful and respectful way – in reverence for life.