Like a modern day Doctor Dolittle, Dr. Temple Grandin helps people understand animal behaviour. A Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, she travels the world to improve livestock handling facilities and teach large corporations and workers the correct procedures to follow in slaughterhouses and factory farms, greatly improving animal welfare.
However, for those individuals who wish to abolish slaughterhouses and the consumption of meat altogether, Dr. Temple Grandin is an enigmatic figure. For individuals who want to alleviate animal suffering at any cost – she is the ultimate heroine.
In addition to her animal welfare work, she is also an authority on autism as well as the author of several popular books - Thinking in Pictures, Livestock Handling and Transport, Humane Livestock Handling and the seminal Animals in Translation. We caught up with Dr. Temple Grandin to ask her a few questions about her latest book Animals Make Us Human: Creating The Best Life For Animals.
Why did you write Animals Make Us Human?
One of the things I came up with was looking at the core emotional systems and how animal behaviour relates back to those core emotional systems. If you can figure out what is motivating a behaviour then you can work on understanding it. Is the behaviour motivated by fear or separation anxiety? Or anger? Or the drive to seek? These are basic emotional systems that all mammals and birds have and the circuits in the brain have been completely mapped, it is not theory, it is hard science. In fact some of the science is quite old.
The other function of the book was to include some of my experiences in implementing practical animal welfare systems that work. For example, I devised auditing systems for meat plants. You can manage things that you measure, if you don’t measure what is going on then how do you know if your practices are getting worse or if your practices are getting better? But if you verify, with simple measurements, like how many animals fell down during handling, then you can measure if you are getting better or at least staying the same.
It is one of my big concerns when looking at animal issues that policy gets totally separated from implementation on the ground. I am someone who wants to make real changes and improvements on the ground.
I also want to make sure Catherine Johnson, my co-author from Animals Make Us Human, gets lots of credit. She came up with the idea of relating everything back to the core emotions. The livestock stuff is from me. I also went back and dug up a lot of scientific papers to ensure there was hard science behind everything.
Why do people think animals don’t have emotions?
People say animals don’t have emotions and that is just stupid because basic emotional systems are the same. The difference between a human being and an animal is the complexity of emotion. Humans are filtering things through a computer perched on top of the emotional centre that is ten times bigger than what most animals have. So emotions are going to be expressed in a more complex manner. Animals are not going to write a Shakespearean sonnet, for example, but I do think they have some very complex things with tone of voice. I have always thought that is what music is for.
Why is there a separation between policy and practical solutions to alleviate animal suffering?
I think this is a fundamental problem. We are getting these policy makers that are totally removed from anything practical. They get out of college, they go to Washington, D.C and they never do anything practical. So you get this policy that is too abstract and it is never going to work. You have got to get involved in stuff on the ground.
Does this create a disconnection from animals?
Yes, a disconnection from animals, but it is also a disconnection from doing practical things like building a house or baking a cake. By doing physical things there is a practical problem-solving element and you figure out how to do things. I have been to Washington on various things and it is such an unreality, everything becomes politicking and they have forgotten how to do things out in the field.
People also have fundamental differences of approach. Some people think that eating meat is just wrong, if your belief is that eating meat is wrong then no matter what I do, it is still wrong. My belief is that we can use animals in an ethical manner. I believe they are a fundamental part of sustainable agriculture.
I definitely wanted to get people to understand animal behaviour and also alleviate animal suffering.
—Temple Grandin
Was it your intention to help people understand animal behaviour and/or to alleviate animal suffering?
Both. I definitely wanted to get people to understand animal behaviour and also alleviate animal suffering. For example, if you think of all these dogs that are home alone in the afternoon barking, they are not happy dogs, that is separation anxiety and you need to do something about it. Like maybe get another dog or leave it at a doggy day-care or take it to work.
Why don’t people understand these simple solutions?
Sometimes the most obvious is the least obvious. I have found that to be true again and again. People often don’t see the simplest things. I talked about this in Animals in Translation, about the things that cattle are afraid of when you are handling them, like a coat on a fence or a shiny reflection. Why are people not seeing these things? Sometimes people don’t see the most obvious things; maybe this is just going to give me job security.
One thing that I have always done in my work, including my work with autism, is to bridge the gap between the scientific world and the practical world. For example, I was talking with a vice president of a large pig farm and he didn’t even know that scientific research on animal behaviour existed so I showed him how to look this information up on some databases, right on his computer in his office.
It is hard for some people who think totally in words to imagine an alternate reality.
—Temple Grandin
What drives you to care about animals?
Well, I want to improve things. I do the same with autism. I gave an autism talk recently and I tried to include some information about the latest research and a lot of people don’t understand sensory sensitivities in autism, like maybe the fire alarm goes off and it hurts the kids’ ears or they can see the flicker of fluorescent lights and it drives them crazy.
It is hard for some people who think totally in words to imagine an alternate reality. Where the sound of a smoke alarm that is just annoying to them is like a dentist drill hitting a nerve for some kid with autism. It is hard for some people to imagine that.
Do animals have extreme sensitivity?
Animal thinking is sensory based. They don’t have words; so they have to store information as pictures, sound bites or touch sensations, smell sensations. For example, when a dog smells a fire hydrant that every other dog has left its calling card on, there is a tremendous amount of information on that fire hydrant and it is going to be coming to that dog via a lot of perfume whiffs. It is totally sensory based, it is the only way an animal can store the information because they don’t have language.
What are the sounds they make? Is this not language?
Well, they are conveying emotion. They have alarm calls, sounds to tell other animals where food is. But the language is tonal, it conveys complexity of emotion. What do you think music is for? Why do you think the brain has a music system? Some say music is just evolutionary baggage, but I don’t buy that. Why does the brain have five different kinds of circuits in there for all the different parts of music like pitch, melody and rhythm? Five different sensory attributions for music, there are specific circuits in the brain for that in human beings. Why do they have them?
As an autistic person, one of the subtle cues I can pick up well is, like when talking with people on the phone, is the tone of voice. I like the telephone as I can concentrate on tone of voice. I didn’t even know people had all these eye signals until I read about them in a book when I was fifty.
How revolutionary is your approach to animal behaviourism?
Looking at things from sensory based learning, I talked about this quite a bit in Animals in Translation, a lot of people consider that approach 
really revolutionary – mainly people that are highly verbal. The study of core emotional systems has been around for quite some time, but it has been hidden away in obscure journal articles that aren’t read by regular people.
There are a lot of inconsistencies in the data. For example, you take stereotypic behaviour where the animal is doing repetitive behaviour because it is in a zoo or a barren environment. In one situation you put it on an opiate blocker and it stops the behaviour, but in another situation the opiate blocker doesn’t stop the behaviour. Then it probably has more to do with what is actually motivating the behaviour. If it is seeking it will probably stop the behaviour, but if fear is motivating the behaviour it is probably not going to stop it.
Was Animals Make Us Human written for laypeople?
Yes, just for the general public, anyone that is interested in animals – pets or farm animals. I have books for people in the industry – on livestock handling and transport – a strictly scientific textbook. But I do think the public needs to learn more. I also think scientists need to be communicating with the general public more, but we have to communicate with the public in a way that they can understand.
Switching subjects a little bit. I wanted to ask about your work in slaughterhouses and how you manage with your sensitivities.
Well slaughterhouses have improved quite a bit, there is still a lot of bad stuff on the internet and there are still some horrible plants out there, but at a lot of them the animals just walk in and bang, it is done.
One of the things that I had to figure out very early in my career is whether the cattle knew if they were going to die. This was back in the 70s so I went to a local plant to watch them go up the chute and then I went to a feedlot to watch them being vaccinated. Then I went back to the plant and back to the feedlot, and the cattle behave the same way in both places. I found that if I changed things like the lighting or I put solid sides on the chute or eliminated reflections on the floor, then they would walk in quietly.
Would you say the majority of slaughterhouses in the USA are becoming increasingly decent?
Yes, I would. One of things we really need to watch for is some of the little plants – there are some local plants that are absolutely terrible. But there are also some little plants that are absolutely wonderful.
Some animal rights’ people wonder why don’t I don’t turn them in. The problem with that is you win the battle, but you lose the war.
—Temple Grandin
Do you ever become overwhelmed in slaughterhouses?
Well, if you blow a big fit on them, they kick you out. I keep confidentiality about where I see some of the bad stuff happen. Some animal rights’ people wonder why don’t I don’t turn them in. The problem with that is you win the battle, but you lose the war. The war is making overall large improvements for example, when the large restaurant chains adopted my scoring system that resulted in some big improvements in slaughterhouses.
Now the USDA is enforcing the humane slaughter act a lot more strongly and this helps make plants adopt it. For the first thirty years of my career that was not the case. But over the last five years, there have been real improvements. I have been around since the seventies and the only way I could get them to improve was to tell them it would decrease bruises, improve meat quality, increase worker safety, etc. Economic incentives. One of the things that has helped slaughterhouses improve is that a big plant does not want to get kicked off the approved supplier list and lose a million dollars worth of business every year.
I just keep trying to do practical things and I do feel a big responsibility to put out information that is accurate and that will help people make good practical changes for animals on the ground and in the field.
—Temple Grandin
How do you feel about the magnitude of what you have accomplished in the world of animal welfare?
Well, never get a big fat head. I remember seeing a poster of a famous general and all the pigeons were messing on him and all the pigeon doo was dripping on his face and the poster explained that this is what happens when you get famous.
I just keep trying to do practical things and I do feel a big responsibility to put out information that is accurate and that will help people make good practical changes for animals on the ground and in the field.
Do you feel overall that things are improving for animals?
Yes, but there are still things that need to be improved. My biggest concern is what I call biological system overload. For example, dairy cows only last two years for lactation now. We are pushing the animal so much to produce that they fall apart.
Then there is the overbreeding, the hormones and the food additives – there is one that really pushes the biology of the animal to make lean meat. It can cause lameness and heat stroke – we are pushing the animals too hard.
But to answer your question, it comes down to do you want to reform slaughterhouses or get rid of them? I am trying to fix the industry, not get rid of it. The industry has done a lousy job of communicating with the public. I think that part of this is fear; they are not working with the public or the press. They tend to just build bigger fences and go hide in the plant.
I do come from the perspective that using animals for food or agriculture or pets is acceptable, but we have got to give those animals a good life.
—Temple Grandin
Anything you would like to add?
Just that I hope Animals in Translation and Animals Make Us Human will help people understand animals. I do come from the perspective that using animals for food or agriculture or pets is acceptable, but we have got to give those animals a good life. Whether it is cattle or dogs we have got to give them a good life.
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Visit: http://www.templegrandin.com/
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