Decades of progress: A conversation with animal welfare expert Temple Grandin 

So, Temple, a lot of people assume you were born and raised on a farm. Can you tell me how you became acclimated to livestock? 

Well, I was raised in Dedham, Massachusetts, right outside of Boston, with no contact with cattle. That all started when I was 15 and went out west to my aunt’s ranch. My experience with cattle started as a teenager and that brings up an important thing: students get interested in things they get exposed to. If I hadn’t been exposed to cattle at that time, I would not be in the cattle industry today. 

 

Speaking of starting out in the cattle industry, can you tell me how you started with Cargill? 

One of the big projects I did with Cargill was the first center track restrainer for beef cattle. One of the things that’s so important when you’re introducing a new technology is to have early adopters that want to make it work. I want to thank leadership at your Schuyler, Nebraska, plant for being behind the project and helping to make it work – that's where the first center track restrainer was installed in the summer of 1989. 

 

If you were to challenge Cargill to think differently – whether it’s animal welfare, employment, retaining talent – how would you challenge us? 

One of my biggest concerns for the meat industry is the loss of people who think visually. I’m what’s called an object visualizer – people like me cannot do higher math. We’ve got to be introducing young kids to tools, because we need the skills of these visual thinkers who can work in mechanics and build things like the center track restrainer. Businesses need to understand that different kinds of thinking exist, and we need those abilities.  

 

You’ve been to every corner of the world, looking at livestock, training folks, speaking about autism. What’s your favorite place that you visited? 

A few years ago, I went on a trip to the Australian Outback and that really got me thinking about where cattle belong in our ecosystem. People forget that 20% of the Earth’s land can only be grazed. And if you do grazing right, you can improve land. With positive practices, like crop rotation, cover crops, grazing, animals can be a really important thing for improving soil and improving land. That trip to the Outback really made me think, and the trips that make me do that become my favorite places. 

 

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