Yeah, Temple Grandin is really something else. Errol Morris made a documentary about her called Stairway to Heaven -- it's hard to find but definitely worth it if you can track it down. Also, I really like her book Thinking in Pictures (she has others but I haven't read those yet).

My mom's a big Temple Grandin fan. She teaches special ed, and Grandin's work has given her some insight into how her students' minds work. And she likes to hold her up as an example of success to worried parents.

she sounds really cool. she got lucky tho, with mentors and a career that fit with her strengths and weaknesses.

i bought animals in translation when it first came out. interesting stuff, a great read.

She also rose to prominence by designing better chutes through which cattle could be run to be slaughtered.

Just sayin'.

She also rose to prominence by designing better chutes through which cattle could be run to be slaughtered.

Just sayin'.
posted by BitterOldPunk 13 April | 05:48

That has has always seemed like a strange contradiction to me, too. but even PETA likes her. In the process of designing those shoots, she ensures that slaughterhouse workers put less stress on the animals and use the electric prod much less. She even ends up enforcing whatever rules exist in slaughterhouses, like trying to make sure they kill with one shot on the captive bolt.

I can show you some hideous video of the usual scenario in which pigs, cattle and, yes, horses are rarely killed with less than three shots.

Here's what a long-time slaughterhouse worker has to say about the bolt:

As a former slaughter house worker, I told Mrs. Marchand and the Township Committee I had personally used the captive bolt gun to kill many hundreds of animals. In my professional experience, even in the best of circumstances in a very controlled environment wherein the animal to be killed was first herded into a "squeeze gate," I have personally shot the bolt through eyes, foreheads and noses of these animals as they struggled against the restraints. The general problem is well known and documented in the meat industry.

Grandin says that slaughterhouse "rules" are often ignored completely because slaughterhouses are unable to comply with them. They fail their tests, then they are fined or shut down, then the business puts pressure on the gov't and the slaughterhouse ends up with an inspector who turns a blind eye and lets the killers do whatever they want. Evidently Grandin helps to alleviate this common problem.

Anyway, Grandin's ability to be employed by the slaughterhouse industry with companies like McDonald's has always seemed, to me, a little contradictory to her love of animals... but in the long run, she is able to do it, able to witness these things and work in these hideous death-camps, and some good comes out of it.

For a detailed look at the travesty of slaughterhouses, not just for the animals but for the mostly immigrant workers, check out Fast Food Nation, a GREAT book everyone should read.

Oops--here is the source for the slaughterhouse worker quote.

You're right amber she did get very lucky with the right mentors at the right times in her life. And yeah she is a true animal rights respector while recognizing that yes, they are a poart of our diet.

SHe was amazingly practical and no nonsense.

frances1972 I'd like to get Thinking in Pictures too.

As much as enjoyed Animals in Translation, I wish she'd made more of an effort to distinguish between the SCIENCE in the book and her own hunches and intuitions. I mean no disrespect to the latter -- she's insightful and interesting in any case. I'd just have preferred a clearer sense of which was which.