Until a couple of decades ago (until before the supermarkets) in the days when one bought meat at a butcher who often killed and butchered his meat one would bleed the animal (catching the blood to make blood sausages and the like) and then HANG it for a couple of weeks (in a cooled place, such as a refrigerator or a shed with blocks of ice – the idea would be to ‘ripen’ the meat, not to spoil it). Only organ meat would be sold fresh, the rest was, as I said, hung in a cool place. This hanging was essential; it almost predigested the meat so the end cuts would be tender and delicious. Apparently, the better butchers still age their beef and this is what is so ludicrous about this all; until sixty years ago, no housewife would expect to buy beef that looked as if it had just been slaughtered. Nobody would WANT beef that had just been slaughtered. Our culture has distanced itself so much from our food (instead of buying meat from the butcher who still had half a carcass hanging behind the shop counter to buying meat in plastic boxes) that we don’t even know any longer what good beef looks like. It has become subjected to this wholesale idea that everything that is sold must be FRESH, or at least LOOK fresh (‘shop appeal!”), so it has to look as if it has come straight from the slaughter.