Forgive the coffee-fueled ramblings, but... Europe definitely has more butchers than America simply because of its history; however, the whole continent seems to be in some sort of self-destruction/self-loathing death spiral where every good tradition and bright idea from the past is cast down the moral relativism black hole and replaced with whatever the current overwrought WEF doublegood groupthink is. The noble butcher is not extinct, but he is going that way if we don't do something about it! Additionally, the people "fabricating" meat at modern supermarkets generally aren't butchers anymore. They're restaurant workers tired of the grind and looking to eek out an easier job while they go to night school, or they're people that have been bounced around the store until being swept out of sight behind the frock and the beard net. There are exceptions. As for these supermarkets, they don't source their meat from farms--and if they do, it's at a premium and probably not as mom-and-pop as they'd have you believe. Seasonally local shrimp, industrial chicken, Canadian mussels. Instead, they largely deal in garbage meat straight from massive distribution centers that have a veritable library of low-quality frozen sub-primals. These are shipped to supermarkets where people who can barely do their job hastily cut them into a facsimile of "breakfast steak" or "3/4-inch chop" or the dreaded catch-all "stew meat", stick them in the display case, and let them thaw. Now, that's service!