Right now, the idiosyncratic electronic musician Matthew Herbert is hard at work on One Pig, a concept album about the life and death of a pig. Herbert's original intent was to record everything that happened during a particular pig's life cycle, from birth to butchery. (He couldn't find a slaughterhouse that would allow him to record the pig's death, though.) Herbert is then turning all those sounds into music.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has issued a statement condemning Herbert's project. Herbert quotes the statement on the blog he's dedicated to the album's process: "No one with any true talent or creativity hurts animals to attract attention ... Pigs are inquisitive, highly intelligent, sentient animals who become frightened when they are sent to slaughterhouses, where they kick and scream and try to escape the knife. They are far more worthy of respect than Matthew Herbert or anyone else who thinks cruelty is entertainment."

On the blog, Herbert responds to PETA's attack, claiming that he's "puzzled". In the long and revealing post that follows, Herbert talks about the details of the album's creation and sheds some light on why he's tackling this particularly gruesome subject in the first place. He explain that the pig's life was actually fairly pleasant, at least by pig-raised-for-slaughter standards.

Herbert also explains that the project is intended to do more than entertain. It's based around the idea that we, as a society, consume industrially grown food without giving much thought to how it came into being, and he wants us to pay attention to the animals that many of us eat. He writes, "I eat meat. As I get older, I feel less proud of that fact. however, since I do eat meat, I think that I have a responsibility to understand the implications of that decision ... I am hoping to attract attention to the idea that we cannot build a sustainable society with a system founded on hypocrisy."

In the end, it seems like PETA and Herbert are basically on the same side here-- or something like the same side, anyway. PETA wants to end cruelty to animals, and Herbert at least wants us to interrogate the ways in which we're casually cruel to animals. He ends the post by invoking the idea that art needs to bring up uncomfortable thoughts: "I thought art and music was, in part, supposed to endorse the idea of challenge. Isn't part of its core purpose to struggle in public with the compromises and frictions of its time? The implication of this statement is that PETA would rather artists and musicians stood quietly to one side whilst such a poisonous and corrupt system cheerfully multiplied, unseen, unchallenged, unheard."

You can read Herbert's entire response here.