Temple Grandin

by Annette Wood

  Creekstone is north of Arkansas City beneath the city water tower, but no GPS was going to tell me that. I found it after asking directions.

  I finally located the entrance to the plant, marked with a welcome sign for visitors. A multitude of glass doors look out over the parking lot. Creekstone’s $185 million, 450,000-square-foot packing plant was built in 2001. When I visited, it was still one of the most advanced slaughterhouses in the country. It employed seven hundred people, important to the economy of Arkansas City, a town of 11,000 people.

  After a short wait in the reception area, Jim bounded down the stairs to meet me. He’s almost a foot taller and at least twenty years younger than I am. We introduced ourselves and he led me to his office. A New York Times article heralding Creekstone Farms beef was on the wall. It held a multitude of plaques from places where their products are sold. I knew Creekstone sold beef to many high-profile restaurants in New York, but there are many others.

  “What do you want to see?” Jim asked.

  “Everything,” I replied.

  “Even where a cow is stunned?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but ask me again when we get there.”

  “I will,” he said.

  We walked a short distance before we suited up, a requirement by health and safety regulations. We wore jackets, hairnets under our hats, and white gloves. He handed me earplugs and booties to slip over my shoes. The journey began.

  In the first area, workers were grinding up beef for hamburger. The beef came from cattle that had been tested for E. coli and mad cow disease and only from those raised in certain pastures by farmers approved by Creekstone Beef.

  We moved to the carving area. First, each carcass is opened at the twelfth rib, exposing the rib-eye and revealing the marbling. A grader from the United States Department of Agriculture examined the carcasses. Wielding their sharpened knives, butchers carved some nine hundred carcasses swinging on computerized trolleys, riding rail after rail as they were cut up. One of the workers constantly sprayed water.

  Jim said, “We discharge into the Arkansas River approximately 600,000 gallons of water daily. This water has been treated by our on-site water treatment plant and is as clean or cleaner than the water already in the Arkansas River.”

  I noticed the smell was much less offensive than the packing plant in Emporia, Kansas, where I’d gone to college in the 1970s. One reason is that Creekstone processes fewer animals. In an industry that processes more than 600,000 head of cattle weekly, Creekstone, with its 5,000 head a week, accounts for less than 1 percent of the total number of animals. Fewer cattle helps reduce the stench.

  Another reason for less stench is the airflow. “Our facility has separate air handling units for each department. There it circulates to our harvest department [dirtier part of the plant]. It does not mix with air in our fabrication department [cleaner part of the plant], which helps reduce the risk of contamination,” Jim said.

  Workers labeled every piece of meat and then entered the number into the computer. Later, if there was a problem, it could be tracked for future reference.

  We climbed the stairs, holding on to the railing as the sign cautioned. I spotted several small pieces of stray meat tracked in by worker’s shoes on the stairway. In the packing area, workers sealed meat in cold bags and packed it in dry ice for shipping. Boxes were stacked high.

  “The innards section will be warm and smelly,” Jim warned. It was, though not nearly as smelly as I expected. I easily identified the liver and the heart.

  He showed me the black tongues of Angus cows. “In Japan, black tongues are a delicacy,” he said. “We ship our tongues to Japan.”

  We moved to the area where workers stripped black hides. Black hides hung in various stages of stripping. I knew E. coli is often found in the skins. “All cattle have E. coli,” said Jim. “Cattle don’t care where they lie. They frequently lie in manure.”

  I was especially interested in the next part, which Temple Grandin had designed. “In 2000, Creekstone gave Dr. Grandin a pencil and piece of paper and told her not to worry about money,” said Jim. At the time, it was owned by a company called Future Beef. Creekstone is the result.

  By then, Temple was esteemed in the livestock business. Her methods of advocating humane treatment for animals had proven successful. Benefits of humane treatment are both gratifying and profitable. She says calm handling practices reduce the animals’ fear and stress. Treating animals humanely decreases injuries both to animals and their handlers.

  Grandin uses natural behavior to keep cattle comfortable. I saw how cows followed each other up the ramp to slaughter. I recalled my dad holding open the gate for the lead cow. Then we watched as cows, steers, and calves trailed across the road, one after another, to the other pasture.

  Jim and I walked above the pens. Each pen held twenty-eight animals. Black faces and an occasional white one, which meant a Hereford had slipped in somewhere, looked up calmly. The silence awed me. I grew up on a farm, but had never been around this many perfectly quiet cows.

  “Mooing means stress,” Jim said. I remembered an example of stressed-out cows and calves in my childhood when the dam of a neighbor’s pond broke because of excess rain. We lived half a mile away, but that night was filled with constant mooing as the cows struggled to cope with unexpected water.

  At Creekstone, silent cows follow each other to the stun area. When Jim and I were there, workers from the stun area were on break, so I didn’t get to see a cow knocked out. I was disappointed because I knew how important fast and painless stunning has been to Temple.

  I did get to see the center-track restraining system Temple invented. It’s been installed in half the slaughterhouses in North America. The restraining system is a conveyor belt that goes under the animal’s chest and belly. The animals straddle it lengthwise the same way they would straddle a sawhorse.

  Temple said, “The reason plants have adopted my design is that animals are much more willing to walk onto it than they are the old V-shaped restraining systems, so it’s a lot more efficient.”1

  Temple has thought a lot about this. “I was upset that I had just designed a really efficient slaughter plant. Cows are the animals I love best.”2

  She decided that she can live with her slaughterhouse designs because we need cows for food. She has been very influential in giving cows a decent death. Cattle slaughter can be calm, efficient, and humane. At one plant, “Each fat steer walked onto the conveyer belt and settled down like a little old lady getting on a bus,” Temple wrote.3 Most of the cows received a pat on the behind as they got on. Since they were close to their buddies, they weren’t at all afraid.

  Grandin said, “I used to wonder if the animals knew they were going to be slaughtered. I watched them going into the squeeze chute on the feedlot, getting their shots, and going up the ramp at a slaughter plant. No difference. If they knew they were going to die, you’d see much more agitated behavior.”4

  After my trip to Creekstone, my husband Dave and I visited Chester’s Chophouse and Wine Bar in Wichita, which uses beef from Creekstone. This was a fancier restaurant than we usually patronize, but the service was excellent and we both found the food marvelous. “It was expensive, but we’ll go back,” Dave said. “It’s been years since I had a steak so delicious.”

  CHAPTER 15

  IMPROVING ANIMAL WELFARE

  Because he knows Temple Grandin, I had asked for an interview with Dr. Mike Siemen, head of Cargill’s animal welfare, which is based in Wichita. I parked on the street beside Cargill’s new Innovation Center, a just-opened $15 million, 75,000-square-foot building. I entered the building and the receptionist looked Siemen up on the computer while I signed in and filled out a name tag.

  Dr. Siemen appeared before I was finished. We introduced ourselves and rode the elevator to the fifth floor, winding through a multitude of cubes to his office.

  On the wall was a poster of Claire Danes, the actress who played Temple in the award-
winning docudrama, Temple Grandin. Next to it was a large photo of the real Temple, dressed in her customary western wear.

  Cargill, an international producer and marketer of food and agricultural, financial, and industrial products and services, employs 130,000 people in sixty-three countries. The company has had a close working relationship with Temple.

  When founded in 1865 in Minnesota by W. W. Cargill, they made a large grain elevator. Today the company has agricultural projects in many countries, including China, Russia, France, and Canada. They have many elevators storing wheat in the United States.

  The company has recently opened research centers around the world, but this is the only one for the company’s meat operations. Cargill Meat Solutions is an umbrella for seven companies involved in pork, beef, and poultry processing, marketing, and distribution. Cargill Beef is the largest of the units.

  As Connie Erbert of Heartspring had predicted, Mike Siemen was easy to talk to. He’d been with Cargill for five years and worked with Temple for twenty-five. “We think a lot of her,” he said. “Her ideas make sense and they work. She’s persuasive and credible. She understands livestock and has greatly improved facilities. No one could have forecast Temple, born in Boston, would be a livestock expert.”

  Temple flies all over the world, speaking to groups and talking to officials at livestock facilities and meatpacking plants. Her calendar is full for the next two years. “She keeps it in pencil, so she can erase easily,” said Siemen. “She’s in the air every other day.”

  He had changed the time of our original appointment because he needed to videotape Temple. When checking with Temple, she had two hours for taping in San Antonio on Friday. “She needs plenty of time on both ends for videotaping to be productive,” said Siemen. “She doesn’t like to be stressed when getting on flights. When Temple said, ‘I’m done at noon and don’t fly out until seven o’clock ,’ that was perfect. She doesn’t have that much time again for a month.” Consequently, our interview was on August 29, which happened to be Temple’s birthday.

  Where livestock are concerned, Temple’s sensory skills are tuned in. “She focuses on things differently. She hones in on things faster,” said Siemen, which is “an advantage to her in this industry.”

  I already knew that throughout her career, Temple has worked to improve the welfare of animals. I had read Humane Livestock Handling: Understanding Livestock Behavior and Building Facilities for Healthier Animals, which Temple wrote with Mark Deesing. I had also watched the video Cattle Handling in Meat Plants, produced by Grandin Livestock. The principle behind her designs is to use natural behavior to encourage cattle to move willingly through the system. Animals like to see where they’re going. As I know from growing up on a farm, walking single file is the nature of cattle. Temple observed that cattle are calmer when they can touch each other or occasionally receive a pat on the rear end.

  It isn’t the habit for animals to hurry. “Let them go at their own pace,” Temple said. “Calm animals are easier to handle than frightened, agitated ones.” That’s important, because a cow weighs 1,400 pounds or more.

  “Animal handlers are often injured when frightened, agitated cattle run over them. The expense of paying hospital bills and other workmen’s compensation claims or replacing employees costs the meat industry thousands of dollars each year,” Temple wrote.1

  Not only is humane handling safer for workers, it produces better meat. Every bruise directly affects meat quality. “Old bruises cause localized areas of tough meat. Fresh bruises at the meat plant cause huge losses because the bruised meat must be cut out and discarded,” Temple explained.2 “The hide does not have to be damaged to have a bruise underneath. An animal can have a huge bruise under a hide that has completely normal hair and no sign of injury.”3

  Humane handling also reduces illness in animals. “Producers who raise organic or natural beef, pork, lamb, and other meats know that keeping animals healthy is essential. Sick animals that have been treated with antibiotics cannot be sold in the organic market.”4

  Grandin’s innovations don’t have to be complicated or expensive. Many breakthroughs aren’t. She’s banned the use of electric prods. She’s physically taken the electric prod out of some workers’ hands, sometimes leaving the hand still moving. She calls this the “automatic prod reflex.” She substitutes blue, cone-shaped plastic rattles or an inflated trash bag tied to the end of a stick for the electric prod.

  She’s pointed out details that disturb cattle: shadows, coats on the fences, a coffee cup on the ground, and moving people or vehicles. “They’re much more afraid of a dangling chain than death,” Temple said. She encourages getting down and looking at what the animals see.

  Neurotypical people truly think differently than animals or autistic people. Typical people are good at seeing the big picture, but bad at seeing all the tiny details that go into that picture. Most people have brains that are structured to filter out all the tiny details that go into that picture. “The price human beings pay for having such big, fat frontal lobes,” Grandin writes, “is that normal people become oblivious in a way that animals and autistic people aren’t. Normal people stop seeing the details and only see the big picture.”5

  Neurotypical people are surprised when they realize how much Temple sees, but Temple has been amazed by how much ordinary people fail to see.

  “The number one mistake livestock handlers make is too many cattle in the crowding pen,” said Temple. The crowding pen is where they wait before slaughter. She recommends moving cattle in small bunches. “One of the most common mistakes when handling cattle and pigs is overloading the crowd pen leading to a single-file race or loading ramp. The pen should be half full so that the animals will have room to turn.”6

  Temple designed facilities catering to the cows’ needs. Cows follow each other through the narrow passage, enjoying being near each other, and are calmed by the subdued lighting. Curved walls eliminate sharp corners (Temple’s been known to put cardboard over a sharp corner until it could be changed) and blind turns that make them nervous.

  Temple can look at a system and see animals walking through it. Even after the design is finished, plant managers call her to look at their plans before they change things. “Sometimes Temple will say, ‘Let’s make modifications.’ It’s cheaper to consult with Temple than to remove concrete and then pour more,” said Siemen.

  Two of Temple’s biggest areas of concern are slaughter and the need for nonslip flooring. Cattle are much more secure if they don’t feel like they’re going to slip when walking. She recommends grooves in the floor where cattle are walking. “If they’re not deep enough, rent a grooving machine and make them deeper,” she says.

  “Nonslip flooring is essential for good animal handling,” she writes. “ Important places to have nonslip flooring: single-file race, truck floors, veterinary facilities, stun boxes, and the crush. Small repeated slips where one hoof moves back and forth rapidly are really scary for animals.”7

  Temple is not against slaughter. She realizes the cattle were grown for food. She just wants it to be humane. Sledgehammers to knock cows out were banned in 1958 by the Humane Slaughter Act. All meat plants that sell meat to the U.S. are covered by this act. It requires that cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats must be made instantaneously insensible to pain prior to slaughter.

  If the plant is using one of Temple’s designs correctly, humane slaughter is assured. “The cattle walk calmly down a gentle staircase until they find themselves supported by the chest and belly on a track Grandin designed. They see a diffused light shining above them and a moment later, a stunner renders them unconscious,” reports Steve Warblow in Cargill News.

  People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) awarded Temple a Proggy award in 2004. This award goes to a person or group that has an innovative approach to the welfare of animals. “Years back the president of PETA was quoted in The New Yorker as crediting Temple with relieving more suffering (of animals) than an
yone who’d ever lived,” said Norm Ledgin, who wrote Diagnosing Jefferson.

  From my interview with Mike Siemen, I learned Temple is an adviser and educator, but there’s not much gray area. “It’s either right or wrong,” said Siemen.

  If someone asks her a technical question, she may take half an hour to answer. She believes those who deal with factual details contribute far more to progress than people who engage in purely social exchanges such as “How’s the weather?” and tend to be more constructive.

  “I learned when talking on the phone with Temple about my manuscript Diagnosing Jefferson that if I wanted to win her help and support with the project, I’d better be more detailed in my writings about Jefferson,” said Ledgin. She has no patience with beating around the bush. She likes facts, details, directness, and tends to get lost when others are vague or speak or write in abstract language.

  Temple’s insistence on facts and details has served her well in her capacity as a designer of humane handling of animals. Her focus on detail has also helped her develop standards for auditing meatpacking plants.

  “Slaughter plants that have the best animal welfare standards are usually those that are audited by a major customer,” Temple notes. In the United States, major customers such as McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King audit large meat plants. In the meat industry, Temple observed that measuring and auditing greatly improved practices. “The percentage of animals that vocalize (moo and squeal) should be measured when observing cows and pigs,” she wrote.8

  The American Meat Industry guidelines were adapted from those developed by Temple in the mid 1990s. Today there’s a committee, which both Mike Siemen and Temple are on, that reviews the guidelines annually. The 2010 edition is 111 pages long. Some years they’re just tweaked, and sometimes major changes are made.

  Originally, biased audits—for example, moos counted by a worker—were made with a clipboard. Today, checks are also made with a remote video called “unbiased auditing.” The goal is to have them match within 2 percent of each other. Reports are made every week. One group looks at the plants and provides incentives for the plant that scores the highest.