Communal supervision of shehitah is a long standing practice. The first signs of organized communal control over shehitah appeared at the end of the tenth century in Ramleh, Ereẓ Israel, and in Egypt. The old profession of tabbhh, combining slaugterer and meat seller, was divided into two, when the kazzav, the butcher, ceased to act as slaughterer, a function which was acquired by the specialist shohet. This became the rule, albeit with some exceptions, in the kingdoms of Christian Spain and in the Sephardi Diaspora after 1492. The shohet was also expected to act as bodek, to examine the animal lungs for kashrut. Usually the shohet was granted hazakah or perpetual tenure; he did not have to stand for reelection and could be dismissed only for transgression. This right was often transmitted to his heirs and sometimes remained in the same family for many generations. In Venice he was called the sagatino. In order to pay the shohet's salary, the community arranged to collect fees for his services. Periodically the shohet's work in the abattoir was inspected by the local rabbi or dayyanim; many communities hired two shohatim. In smaller settlements the shohet often combined his work with the office of cantor, teacher, or other paid communal functions. As the shohet was responsible for many minutiae in the proper exercise of his function, his character and piety were as important to the community as his technical expertise. Some kabbalists, chief among them the anonymous 14th-century Spanish author of Sefer ha-Kaneh and Sefer ha Peli'ah, attacked the whole conception of meat-eating and cattle-slaughtering as a part of the general life-style. On the other hand, the development of the concept of metempsychosis made shehitah and the shohet participants in the right way of liberating the soul from its material environment if both the action and the man were pious and proper.

The method of shehitah and attitude to it of Ashkenazi Jewry developed largely on the same lines. In Hasidism the mystical appreciation of shehitah became an ideological and social mark of the movement. Tales told about R. Israel b. Eliezer Ba'al Shem Tov express a deep concern with the personality of the shohet; miraculously the Ba'al Shem Tov was able to know and disclose the sins of the shohet in various places. Hasidism introduced a different technique for the fine sharpening of the shohet's knife. As the circle around R. Elijah b. Solomon Zalman , the Gaon of Vilna, objected to the introduction of highly polished knives, contending that such instruments were prone to denting, the hasidic shehitah became both a divisive factor in the community and a unifying element among the Hasidim. In 1772 a herem was proclaimed against the hasidic shehitah, its knives, and its shohatim, which "are of a certainty blemished with the taint of heresy. Meat [or cattle] slaughtered by these burnished knives is not kasher." As Hasidism spread, the close tie between the rabbi and the shohet made the introduction of hasidic shehitah a tangible sign that the Hasidim had taken over the community and the rabbinate. The kahal acquired monopolistic control over all shehitah and sale of kasher meat. Soon the income from shehitah was employed not merely to defray expenses but also to underwrite educational, charitable, and other communal endeavors. As early as the 12th century in Castile there are references to such a meat tax. Throughout the Sephardi world it was known as gabela and in Morocco in modern times it was called hakdish. In Poland from the 17th century and in Russia it was called korobka . In Berlin the sheḥitah tax is first documented in 1723, but it probably existed long before that. Often these taxes became the mainstay of communal income. In modern times various states – often on the initiative of the maskilim – used the meat tax as a method of financing their own enterprises, educational and otherwise, among the Jews. As East European Jewry migrated to Western Europe and the New World they instituted the shehitah tax there too. In New York the shohet was at first a functionary of the synagogue rather than of the community as a whole. In the 20th century, with the development of canned meat and canning factories and the concentration of great numbers of Jews in a few communities, shehitah underwent many changes. The kasher butchers were supervised by a mashgi'ah ("supervisor") or as he was called in London a shomer ("watchman"). Each properly slaughtered animal or fowl was identified by a plombe, a lead disc stamped kasher and showing the date of slaughtering. Every can of meat had to be similarly marked. Attempts were made to ensure central supervision over kashrut in order to check the many abuses that had appeared. In Palestine the Mandatory government adopted regulations which provided that in each city shehitah must be under the control of a single board representing the various groupings in the community. In Israel sheḥitah has remained under the general supervision of the Mo'azot Datiyyot ("religious councils") and the rabbinate.