Steven M. Wise

“The historian William Cronon explains that packing plants

'distanced their customers most of all from the act of killing.... The more people became accustomed to the attractively cut, carefully wrapped, cunningly displayed packages that Swift had introduced to the trade, the more easily they could fail to remember that their purchase had once pulsed and breathed with a life much like their own.... As time went on, fewer of those who ate meat could say they had actually killed the animals themselves. In the packer's world, it was easy not to remember that eating meat was a moral act inextricably bound to killing. Such was the second nature that a corporate order had imposed on the American landscape. Forgetfulness was among the least noticed and most important of its by-products.”
― Steven M. Wise, An American Trilogy

“Between 6 and 8 percent of pigs die before they are trucked from the factory farm to slaughter. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 123 million pigs were slaughtered in 2006. That means 7 to 10 million died on their own before we could kill them.”
― Steven M. Wise, An American Trilogy