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In her new book, The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum, Dr. Temple Grandin writes that her primary identity is “as an expert on livestock,” and her “autism is secondary.” An associate professor of animal science at Colorado State University, best-selling author, and sought-after speaker, Grandin has become quite adept at multi-tasking as she integrates those identities. Her visit to Greenville, IL last Thursday was a great example of how the 65-year-old woman divides her time these days.
First, she spent the afternoon at Marcoot Jersey Creamery, where she toured the dairy farm and spoke to a gathering of the Illinois Agriculture Association. Then, she was the keynote presenter at Greenville College, where she discussed her new book. Sponsored by FAYCO Enterprises, a not-for-profit corporation that supports rehabilitation efforts for citizens with disabilities, the event helped raise awareness about other programs similarly geared towards assisting clients with ASD’s (Autism Spectrum Disorders), head injuries, and cognitive disabilities. After Greenville, Grandin was headed home for one day, and then she goes on to Australia for a veterinary conference, returns to The States for the last week of her book tour, followed by a trip to Thailand to train people in Asia on slaughter auditing.
Grandin, sporting her characteristic western shirt (red with black embellishments), tie-scarf (white), black pants, and horse-and-horseshoe-patterned fleece, seemed inexhaustible as she met with guests at the hors d’oeuvres social hour, posed for pictures, signed books (below), consulted on autism, and then gave the keynote presentation later in the evening.
I was lucky to get 30 minutes of one-on-one time with her, and found the school gym a perfect quiet meeting place. There, we sat side-by-side on the bleachers, leaning forward with forearms on thighs, and discussed a range of topics including animal welfare and slaughter, teaching, raw milk, Ag-Gag laws (she doesn’t support them), meat, anti-depressants, and farming. Grandin remained engaged and funny throughout (she good naturedly mocked me with her singular cadence when I asked if Angus cattle are the black ones), despite her obvious exhaustion. Perhaps the only tell of her hectic schedule was the state of her hands: red and raw, with fingernails bitten to the quick. Below is a condensed and edited version of our conversation.
Did you get to try any cheese at Marcoot?
“I didn’t get a chance. I tried one little tiny taste on a toothpick and it was very good. I was going to buy some, but there were so many people in the store—and then it was time for me to leave—that I didn’t get to buy any. It’s interesting to see that they’re making that work—that high-end niche.”
In a recent Modern Farmer article, you were quoted as saying that animal handling is no longer your top priority, that you’re more interested now in helping farmers connect with their consumers. What do you recommend?
“One of the things Ag[riculture] needs to do is just show what they do. You gotta make sure you put stuff out there that’s good. Recently some people put up a video of them hammering cattle and it was absolutely atrocious, and fortunately some other people got them to take it down. That’s an example of bad becoming normal.”
Grandin then cited the video made by the Peterson Farm brothers that spoofs LMFAO’s “I’m Sexy and I Know It,” where the three buff young men sing “I’m farming and I grow it,” as they work their farm. “It’s absolutely hilarious,” Grandin laughed. It is.
Should farmers use social media?
“That’s exactly what they need to do. Facebook is a good place to put it out. One of the problems we’ve got today is we’ve got consumers—we’ve got kids in the city—when the cattle ranchers brought a calf into the school and showed it to the kids, they thought it was a Rottweiler. That is pretty bad.”
You mentioned the video of farmers abusing cows—so this kind of abuse still happens. What are your primary concerns when it comes to animal handling and welfare?
“There are some things that have to get changed. Right now feed prices are so high, it doesn’t put people in the mood for changing things. (1) Sow gestation stalls, (2) pushing the dairy cow’s biology so hard, she starts to have all kinds of problems, and (3) hen cages; animals that have had some of the worst problems are with the egg layer hens.”
How is a cow’s biology pushed too hard?
“Feed them too many beta-agonists [a feed additive that gives them big muscles], and you’ve got heat-stressed, stiff, lame cattle.”
You’ve said before that one problem with doing away with gestation crates is that some of the sows attack each other.
“A certain genetic line of lean, rapidly growing pigs had that problem. The problem is you keep a pig in a box, they can’t fight. And you breed the pigs to be ‘gain, gain, gain, gain,’ and you’ve accidentally bred a mean pig. Now, they’re gonna have to breed a pig that gains well and is not so mean. Nobody did that on purpose. When you look into these things, you figure out that it’s not quite simple.”
What do you think about the fact that horse slaughter may again take place in the U.S. if the New Mexico plant is opened?
“The problem is you’ve got 2000 horses a month going across the border to Mexico and some might [go] to a EU plant that’s probably fairly decent, and some go on to municipal plants that are terrible.”
Is the answer a humane slaughter plant?
“Well I would say that would probably be better than shipping them to Mexico because what’s happening now is bad. Once they cross the border, you have no control over what’s going on. And if they think they can seal the border, that’s absolute nonsense.”
Do you worry about labels when you eat meat—where it comes from, if the animal was raised and slaughtered humanely?
“I travel so much I can’t worry about it because I wouldn’t be able to eat. I’ve gotta eat what’s at the airport.”
When you buy and prepare meat for yourself, do you look at labels?
“Yes.”
Grandin then went on to discuss how she needs to eat meat, especially in the morning or else she feels lightheaded. She also noted that research has shown that “creatinine [a compound in meat] taken in conjunction with antidepressants works better than antidepressants alone, and creatinine is the stuff that’s in meat.”
Do you think meat can act as an anti-depressant?
“If I don’t eat meat—and dairy doesn’t do it—I can’t function.”
Grandin takes anti-depressants to help with her anxiety, and she argues that the meat makes the anti-depressants more effective. Recent studies do suggest that taking creatine in conjunction with anti-depressants can help with depression in women.
How can a consumer know that he or she is making an ethically sound decision when eating meat?
“The big plants probably do a decent job there. Little plants: they’re either really nice or they’re bad. There doesn’t seem to be anything in between. So much of it gets down to the attitude of the plant manager. The big corporations got rid of some of the bad managers. You’ve got to have a plant manager who cares. If management doesn’t care, you’re going to have bad things going on. Management’s got to care.
People ask me how I can care about animals and be involved in slaughtering them. Well, you know, cattle never would have existed. I feel very strongly that we ought to give them a life worth living.
In a decent [slaughterhouse], cattle behave the same way as they do with a vet. I’m not going to say it’s stress free, but the stress range is the same as in the veterinary chute.”
What’s your favorite thing about teaching?
“When students come back to me later and say things they learned in my class really helped them out.”
What’s your favorite thing about conducting research?
“Discovering new things.”
What’s your favorite thing about book tours?
“Well, when people say they read something in my book that really helped them with their animals or they bought a design book and their corrals work or one of my autism books helped them with their child.”
What’s your opinion about the sale of raw milk?
“You’ve got to be careful. One thing I find when I talk to consumers about that is they don’t know what brucellosis [undulant fever] is and they don’t know what tuberculosis is; they don’t even know why pasteurization started in the first place. To make raw milk safe you have to be extremely careful and keep your herd totally isolated from any animals coming in and giving them tuberculosis or brucellosis. You have to practice really good biosecurity. Safest thing to do if you want any new members of the herd is you bring them in through semen [artificial insemination]. Things are not quite so simple.”
As we rejoined the crowd beyond the gym, Grandin said, “We’ve got to find some practical solutions,” repeating, “It’s not quite simple.”
