Edit: 29/01/2014

Since this post has gone out into the big wide world, it has stirred up a lot of debate and some sensitive feelings. If I had been more critical in my tone, and had more negative points to make about the slaughterhouse, it might have been a lot easier for some people to take - but my approach was to be as neutral as possible and say what I saw from a layman's perspective - and that is what I have done. However, I would like to clarify a couple of points:

- I am not espousing a moral ideology about understanding how an animal dies in order to be able to eat it - I am just giving my opinion - other opinions are available. Everyone is entitled to their own relationship to the food they eat, and the world of culinary delights is a beautiful, fun, disturbing, controversial melting pot of a place. I just think it's a good thing if people think about where their food comes from - and this series is intended to give just a tiny glimpse into one very small part of the origins of some of our food. Of course, the treatment of the animals during their lifetime is as important if not more important than the way it dies, and I would encourage anyone to find out more about this process - but this is not what the piece is about. It seems strange to some people to talk about "respecting" an animal if you are going to kill, or are killing it. As I have made a conscious decision to eat meat, something I spent some time thinking about, I believe that there are good and bad ways to treat an animal during it's lifetime and death. Using as much of the animal as possible, from the nose to the tail, as they do in the plant at Horsens, is also an important part of that respect.

- Believe it or not, I spent seven years as a vegetarian, between the ages of 17 and 24. It taught me a lot about food, and cooking, and when I began to eat meat again I was very cautious. As much as I love it, I still do not eat a lot of meat, and I avoid processed food about 99% of the time. I would like to say that I only eat the best meat all the time, but I'm sure that now and then something slips by - I like a hot dog every once in a while, and if you ever eat out you can rarely be sure where that meat has come from. I have to live with that to a certain extent - however, food should be something we enjoy and something that don't get too bogged down with. Food can be taken too seriously sometimes, and then (at least for me) it stops being fun - but it is important that there is balance and awareness out there as well, and a consumer push towards doing things the right way.

- This series does not show the whole process at the plant. The really bloody parts - the death and the disembowelling - I was not allowed to photograph, because Danish Crown was concerned about the anonymity of the workers in those sections. However, I did see them, and they are part of any normal public tour of the plant. While being hard to stomach (excuse the pun), the process looked like I imagined it to look - a bloodbath. How can you kill 100,000 pigs a week without that?

- I'm sorry, Morrissey.