Probably a decision by the meatpacking companies to make you pay more money. I’m seeing less of it as well.
Perhaps; but I think it has more to do with the fact that there’s really not much butchering done in modern supermarkets.
I think I’ve mentioned previously on another ping-list that I used to be able to go to the grocery, ask for some suet (to make my bird-feeding cakes) and the butcher would give me a pound of it for pennies. But they don’t do that stuff in the stores anymore. The most the meat department in local supermarkets will do, is grind up the plastic-covered meat for you; or chop the plastic-covered whole fowl into pieces. Butchering has been ‘removed from the neighborhood’.
-JT