Temple Grandin: Savant or Professional Killer?

HBO recently aired a made-for-television biopic about Temple Grandin, who is acclaimed for her work in autism and designing humane handling facilities for cattle.

Beloved by many, Grandin, who is autistic herself, was one of the first people to talk openly to the public about her condition lifting the stigma that is often associated with autism. In addition to being one of the first women to hit the scene in the cattle industry, where she wasn’t welcomed with warmth, she’s also widely known for her lectures and books, including Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals.

Grandin, who now has a Ph.D, and is an Associate Professor of Animal Behavior at Colorado State University, credits autism for her success. She claims that the hypersensitivity and unique vision are what have made her so tuned in to what animals sense and how to use it in agricultural engineering to create humane slaughter facilities.

While she’s certainly overcome some tremendous obstacles, she’s also roused some critics along the way who don’t quite see her as a heroine for animals. Indeed, something is amiss.

In her book, Animals Make Us Human, Grandin states that, “I vividly remember the day after I had installed the first center-track conveyor restrainer in a plant in Nebraska, when I stood on an overhead catwalk, overlooking vast herds of cattle in the stockyard below me. All these animals were going to their death in a system that I had designed. I started to cry and then a flash of insight came into my mind. None of the cattle that were at this slaughter plant would have been born if people had not bred and raised them. They would never have lived at all” (p. 297).

Jeffrey Masson, author of When Elephants Weep, seems to have hit the nail on the head with the troubling issue behind Grandin’s work in his review of the book: Temple Grandin Brings Me to Tears (of Frustration). It’s that, “she can never take the next step to questioning what she does.”

Her flash of insight “seems to have pacified her conscience forever! One moment of true insight, when she cried, was quickly stifled by a dumb cliché. It is an argument used by many people who become very annoyed if you say that we wouldn’t want our children born into a world where they would be murdered, no matter how humanely or painlessly, after having lived for just a few months or years.”

“Dr. Grandin never asks the only relevant question here: Is it right to do this at all?”

It seems odd that someone could become such a prominent ethicist without being able to grasp that question. It also seems odd that someone who loves animals and feels they can empathetically relate to the animal mind wouldn’t try to help them live and instead, ironically, designs their deaths for a living. The cows, pigs and chickens that meet their end in a slaughterhouse don’t want to die any more than we do. They probably didn’t want to live that “good” life on a CAFO either.

Is Big Ag just using Grandin as a pawn to assuage consumer guilt over something that’s quickly making its way into the ethically questionable spotlight?

Are people just using oxymoronic terms like “humane slaughter,” “compassionate carnivore” and “ethical meat eater” to ease their conscience and stifle their tears as quickly as Grandin? For meat eaters who decry the use of emotional adjectives attached to the subject of animal rights and welfare, isn’t that the same thing?

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Pego R.

8:31PM PDT on Mar 19, 2012

You know very well that that is not true, but is propaganda. Ours has always been an omnivore species. Anthropology, coprolite studies and biology have all addressed this and came to the same conclusion. All that brouhaha has been the fluff of bad science paid for by Kellogg, PETA and others making a hefty dime out of it.

Even the traditional Indian diet is not vegetarian enough by that standard, they are ento-lacto-pescetarian.

This is why you and Marie always hear arguments against veg info out of me. I'm not against this diet, and no, I do not promote meat eating, I promote whatever you need to do to stay healthy, that also helps restore our ballance with the planet.

If you were using bad science from the American Cattlemen's Association, you would STILL be getting the hard edge of my commentary, for the same reason. We simply can't be making these decisions out of propaganda and bad-science riddled websites and databases. They just make us dumber, sheeple, less able to address these choices

send a green star

Past Member .

6:57PM PDT on Mar 17, 2012

Pego, I am sure there are people who cannot exist on nothing but vegetation. I feel sorry for them, but that is no reason to promote meat in people's diet. By far science and logic prove that humans are a vegetarian creature that just so happens was meat to get protein that it does not need.
As for me wishing people people's thoughts just justify my anger, I don't have to wish anything. As a matter of fact, it is the complete lack of thought that makes humanity into such monsters. It is the lack of thought that supported slavery and the lack of women's rights.
The lack of thought that compelled Hitler to put humans on an assembly line to execute them, and the same with the monsters who put any being of this planet on an assembly line of death. It is with the complete lack of thought that people cannot see 2 identical crimes and not see the similarities.
One has victims who are caged in unsanitary cramped conditions, after which they were led into another building in which they had their lives systematically taken from them.
The other has victims who are caged in unsanitary cramped conditions, after which they were led into another building in which they had their lives systematically taken from them.
Now tell me which one was the Holocaust?

Diane L.

1:31AM PDT on Mar 15, 2012

First of all, this is an extremely old discussion. WHY is it being stirred up again? And yes, Eddie C.'s anger & hostilities are hard to understand. He goes off on tirades about abuse and yet displays nothing but hatred and anger towards everyone who he disagrees with, including those who have posted with nothing but logic and respect, in a civil way. He's disrespecting, completely, a woman who has fought a long and difficult battle to do exactly what he says he advocates for.

Russell G.

5:38PM PDT on Mar 14, 2012

Oops - a couple typos there. Demonizing anyone, anytime is not acceptable. Temple is a long ways from being a Hitler.

5:35PM PDT on Mar 14, 2012

I am a vegetarian AND I admire Temple's work. Humans are omnivores as Pego said. The anger is Eddie's comment is hard to understand in someone who wishes to make things better for other beings. I will never eat beef or other flesh again unless it is my only alternative for survival. The costs to the planet of raising beef far outweighs the benefits. But demonizing someone who is making improvements in how other creatures are treated is acceptable even if one doesn't find it laudable. Eddie appears to be of a mindset that says agree with me or you are evil. There is a lot more middle ground than that. Though I admire how Temple has accepted and dealt with her disability I think there is too much focus on her. She stands as an accomplished person. There are many other autistic people (or people with autism - there is another debate) who lead successful lives. Temple is important as an example of a person who has faced life's challenges and striven for more. She isn't hurting anyone and has alleviated suffering for other beings.

4:19PM PDT on Mar 14, 2012

Eddie

You know better than impugning other people with nasty thoughts you WISH they had, so as to justify your own anger about the situation.

Ours is an omnivore species. You know and have already admitted to knowing that there are many people who simply cannot be vegans, or even vegitarians. So long as that situation exists, there will be abatoirs. Dr Grandin has made her mission to change the industry to something that does not cause terror and pain for these animals we owe our lives to.

You can spend all the time you want trying to beat people up into following your diet of choice? Or you can act like a logical and compassionate representative of your diet. You literally cannot have both

10:33AM PDT on Mar 14, 2012

People who think that comparing a slaughterhouse to the holocaust is insulting, obviously have no respect for any life other than human. The absolute exact things that happened to people, that enraged everyone, happens to millions of other just as beings who values their own life just as much as any one of the people who lost their lives to the hands of german slaughterhouse operators. And if you cant see that, you are seriously BROKEN.
These places need the same reaction that we gave to the Germans for the crimes they committed, and some day soon, they will be. Look around you, this ignorance isn't going to be tolerated forever.

10:22AM PDT on Mar 14, 2012

Debbie S. Said it perfectly.

Matt J.

2:37PM PST on Nov 10, 2011

I think there are many reasons why we do or do not eat meat. One of them is based on our state of "enlightenment". A natural consequence of expanding love (seeing your self in others) is that you do not wish to do harm because you start to see it is actually you that is harming your self. Greater discrimination and will power are also components that allow for us to make better decisions and to stick with them to undo old habits.

Of course are bodies are equipped to eat cooked meat as we have canines and such. We are also equipped to be prostitutes and to launch nuclear warheads. What matters, again, is the state of mind that we are coming from which is different for everyone. That is fine. You can't really force someone's internal state to change. All you can really do is make more comfortable chutes for us all to run our gauntlets of life.

11:44AM PDT on Aug 20, 2011

I have been a vegetarian for 34 years. I do it for health and ecology reasons. I find the comments of some vegetarians expressing outrage and anger toward a person who feels differently about how we eat to be very disturbing. Extremism on all sides is a great problem today. There is no basic difference between a vegetarian hating a meat-eater and a fanatic slaughtering scores of those who disagree with him in order to start another pointless "religious" war. My point is that we should strive for light, not incite misery. Hating Temple because she thinks meat eating is ok (many other animals do it) incites misery. I look at Temple as a story of a person who has overcome her own limitations and built a life that works for her and reduces the suffering of other beings.