In 1941, the Rath Packing Company of Waterloo, Iowa published a book titled Waterloo Packer: The Story of the Rath Packing Company to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in the meatpacking industry. Modelled on Life magazine, Waterloo Packer co-opted the photoessay format to commercial ends. Examining archival documentation and looking at other American industrial publications, this article illuminates Waterloo Packer’s conception by executives of the Rath Company and consultants from advertising agency Young and Rubicam; and it contextualises Waterloo Packer as the most innovative of a series of ‘industrial biographies’ produced in the USA at midcentury. Through close reading of Waterloo Packer as phototext, this article demonstrates how the Rath Packing Company deployed photographic imagery to present a controlled and sanitised vision of industrial-scale slaughter.