''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.
Contents
Wise discovered that the same piece of land in
Tar Heel
Tar Heel (or Tarheel) is a nickname applied to the U.S. state of North Carolina and its people. 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 ba ...
, 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 farms for pigs, and the world's largest
slaughterhouse
In livestock agriculture and the meat industry, a slaughterhouse, also called an abattoir (), is a facility where livestock animals are slaughtered to provide food. Slaughterhouses supply meat, which then becomes the responsibility of a mea ...
, operated by
Smithfield Foods
Smithfield Foods, Inc., is an American pork producer and food-processing company based in Smithfield, Virginia. Founded in 1936 as the Smithfield Packing Company by Joseph W. Luter and his son, the company is the largest pig and pork producer in ...
, 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 products and the consumption of animal source foods, and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. A person who practices veganism is known as a vega ...
.
''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".
See also
* Intensive pig farming
Notes
Further reading
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:American Trilogy
2009 non-fiction books
Books about animal rights
Works about the meat industry
Meat processing in the United States
Pigs
Intensive farming
Agriculture in North Carolina
Da Capo Press books