Biography+of+Temple+Grandin

**Temple Grandin (1947 –)**  (born Aug. 29, 1947, Boston, Mass., U.S.)

American scientist and industrial designer whose own experience with autism funded her professional work in creating systems to counter stress in certain human and animal populations.

Grandin was unable to talk at age three and exhibited many behavioral problems; she was diagnosed as autistic. Her parents, rejecting a doctor's advice to place her in an institution, instead sent their daughter to a series of private schools  where her high IQ was nurtured. A 1970 graduate of Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire, where she majored in experimental psychology, she went on to earn a master's degree at Arizona State University in Tempe and a doctorate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both in animal science. Since 1990 she has taught that subject at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where she also runs Grandin Livestock Systems.

Aware that intense fear, born of a hypersensitivity to sound and touch, is common both to autistic people and to animals, Grandin has devoted her life to devising systems to alleviate the anxiety of both groups.  While still in high school she designed a “squeeze machine” to relieve her own nervous tension, modeling it on a chute fashioned to hold animals in place during branding and other procedures. Improved versions of her machine are widely used not only in schools for autistic children but also by autistic adults. The main focus of Grandin's career has been the design of humane livestock facilities that eliminate pain and fear from the slaughtering process. Her designs enable workers to move animals without frightening them.  Grandin is the author, coauthor, or editor of several books.

Grandin was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father was a real estate agent, and her mother was a writer, singer, and actress who devoted her time to improving Grandin's life once she was a diagnosed with autism as a toddler. Autism is a developmental brain disorder, and its origins are the subject of tremendous scientific debate. Autism affects the areas of the brain that direct abstract thought, language, and social interaction, and Grandin displayed the classic symptoms of the condition in her earliest years —she spoke little, did not like to be held or touched, and was prone to dissolve into raging temper tantrums when provoked. In the early 1950s, however, autistic children were sometimes incorrectly judged to be developmentally disabled, and the medical profession often recommended institutionalization. Grandin's parents were told that their daughter was brain-damaged, and suggested a long-term care facility for her. Grandin's mother instead took her to a neurologist, who proposed a course of speech therapy. She was duly enrolled in a program, and at home her mother read to her constantly. The family was also able to afford a caregiver whose job it was to play with Grandin and keep her from retreating into a corner, as autistic children prefer. Grandin's mother also sought out private schools with sympathetic staff that were willing to work with her daughter's special needs. Grandin credits this early intervention with pulling her out of the isolationist shell of autism and laying a path toward her professional success later in life. Grandin became an expert in animal handling in slaughterhouses  and one of the most respected names in her field. The results of the research studies she conducted were published in various academic journals and industry trade publications, and in 1989 she was granted her doctorate in animal science from the University of Illinois. By the mid-1990s, the fast-food industry began to pay attention to her work, thanks to a libel case that wound through the British court system. In that suit, associates of the Greenpeace environmental group wrote and distributed a leaflet about McDonald's, the fast-food giant, claiming that the practices at the slaughterhouses that worked under contract to McDonald's amounted to animal cruelty.  The

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">McDonald's trial in Britain was a long and complicaed legal proceeding, but <span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">one judge did agree that some of the accusations were founded, and that inhumane treatment sometimes occurred in the slaughterhouse. McDonald's hired Grandin as a consultant to improve conditions and avoid a wider public-relations debacle.

One of the most significant innovations that Grandin devised was a chute that led cattle through the slaughterhouse. Standard chutes were built in a straight line, and the cattle could usually see what lay ahead. Grandin knew that if a cow saw something unexpected ahead of them, they froze in their tracks. She designed a circular chute with high walls to remedy this. Though her ideas and suggestions were initially greeted with skepticism in the beef industry, the owners of cattle plants quickly realized that thanks to Grandin's design the cattle hesitated less, and therefore plant efficiency improved. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Grandin redesigned other elements in slaughterhouses, based on other findings from her research: cattle resist being led from bright sunlight into a darkened room, for example, do not like the color yellow, and are upset by clanking metal sounds. Grandin's innovations were backed up by concrete results.

McDonald's and other fast-food corporations, which are the largest processors of beef in the United States, began implementing Grandin's designs in the plants used by the companies. She has also written guidelines for the American Meat Institute, an industry group, and has devised an auditing system that rates how well a plant is complying with the Humane Slaughter Act, the federal guidelines for non-kosher meat-processing facilities in the United States.

<span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Grandin wrote about her work in the 2005 book Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior, which she dictated to her co-author by telephone. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> In it, she concedes that while many animal welfare activists avoid eating meat entirely, l <span style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">ivestock animals were essentially bred by humans to serve a purpose, and that humans should recognize their caretaking role and respond accordingly. "We owe them a decent life and a decent death, and their lives should be as low-stress as possible, " she writes. "That's my job. I wish animals could have more than just a low-stress life and a quick, painless death. I wish animals could have a good life, too, with something useful to do. People were animals, too, once, and when we turned into human beings we gave something up. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Being close to animals brings some of it back."