The rise in the sale and distribution of butcher’s meat in eighteenth-century Paris brought into focus the problem of urbanized meat processing that polluted the air and water supply. The haphazard growth of an illegal trade that competed with the guild masters’shops and stalls challenged the guild’s control over the market, while it highlighted the public role of master butchers who took an oath to provide meat of quality.The wide-spread practice of animal slaughter captured the attention of the corporate community who patrolled the city for rogue butchers, as well as many civic-minded individuals who sought to replace neighborhood tueries with municipal abbatoirs outside the city. The question this essay explores is how the relative power of municipal policing authorities and officers of the butcher guild met with a new understanding of regulation that demanded a greater level of food safety to preserve the health of the urban population.The regulatory focus on meat’s healthfulness and purity in this period — and the particular demands of Parisians for this food — demonstrates the changing role of the state as its policy shifted from guaranteeing an adequate supply to ensuring the standards of health and hygiene in the provisioning of this “necessary” food.