''An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery, and Dominion on the Banks of the Cape Fear River'' is a 2009 non-fiction work by Steven M. Wise about the pig industry in North Carolina. Wise is an American legal scholar who specializes in animal protection.Bamberger Scott, Barbara.
An American Trilogy
" ''Curled Up with a Good Book'', accessed July 4, 2009.

Wise discovered that the same piece of land in

Tar Heel Tar Heel is a nickname applied to the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is also the nickname of the University of North Carolina athletic teams, students, alumni, and fans. The origins of the Tar Heel nickname trace back to North Carolina's promi ...

, North Carolina, has over the years seen the decimation of aboriginal tribes by Christian settlers; was the site of a plantation where African-American slaves once worked; and is now the site of

factory farm Intensive animal farming or industrial livestock production, also known by its opponents as factory farming and macro-farms, is a type of intensive agriculture, specifically an approach to animal husbandry designed to maximize production, while ...

s for pigs, and the world's largest slaughterhouse, operated by

Smithfield Foods Smithfield Foods, Inc., is an American pork producer and food-processing company based in Smithfield, Virginia, in the United States, and an independent subsidiary of WH Group. Founded in 1936 as the Smithfield Packing Company by Joseph W. Luter ...

, where 40,000 pigs are killed every day. In the course of his investigation, Wise interviews former slaughterhouse employees, visits a pork factory, talks to a scientist whose job it is to make pork taste better, and attends the World Pork Expo in Iowa, home of the "Pigcasso" art show and pig races, and, through documenting the life of a fictional pig, criticises the treatment of pigs in pork manufacturing. Wise writes that the work makes the employees callous, and writes that they are often immigrants who will accept any kind of work, and who are the least likely to report what they see there. The regulations that do exist are not enforced, he writes, because anything that enhances the pigs' lives reduces profit.

Reviews

Barbara Bamberger Scott writes for ''Curled Up with a Good Book'' that ''An American Trilogy'' is a dramatic and incisive book. She writes that Wise is not asking people to boycott pork. He is looking for advocates for the pig, not converts to

veganism Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal product—particularly in diet (nutrition), diet—and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. An individual who follows the diet or philosophy is kn ...

. ''Publishers Weekly'' called the book a "muddled manifesto", writing that the author somewhat offensively compares the Indians' "fauna-friendly religion" with the cruel Christian idea of dominion over animals, and before them, over slaves and indigenous Americans. Wise combines what the reviewer writes are genuine outrages with banalities: for example, disapproving of paintings of pigs at the World Pork Expo. The reviewer adds that "Readers who root around a bit will find more cogent discussions of animal-rights issues elsewhere".

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Reviews

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Notes

Further reading