Professor Temple Grandin gave a free public talk, as part of the Bristol Festival of Ideas in association with the University’s Animal Welfare and Behaviour Research Group, last week about her work on animal handling facilities and on farm animal welfare auditing.
An academic who was named as one of the 100 most influential people by
Time Magazine in 2010 gave a free public talk, as part of the
Bristol Festival of Ideas, last week about her work on animal handling facilities and on farm animal welfare auditing.
Temple Grandin is a designer of livestock handling facilities and a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University. Facilities she has designed are located in the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries.
In North America, almost half of the cattle are handled in a centre track restrainer system that she designed for meat plants. Curved chute and race systems she has designed for cattle are used worldwide and her writings on the flight zone and other principles of grazing animal behaviour have helped many people to reduce stress on their animals during handling. She has also developed an objective scoring system for assessing handling of cattle and pigs at meat plants. This scoring system is being used by many large corporations to improve animal welfare. Other areas of her research include cattle temperament, environmental enrichment for pigs, reducing dark cutters and bruises, bull fertility, training procedures, and effective stunning methods for cattle and pigs at meat plants.
Further information
Temple Grandin obtained her BA at Franklin Pierce College and her Masters in Animal Science at Arizona State University. Dr Grandin received her PhD in Animal Science from the University of Illinois in 1989.
Today she teaches courses on livestock behaviour and facility design at Colorado State University and consults with the livestock industry on facility design, livestock handling, and animal welfare.
She has appeared on many television shows, featured in People magazine, the New York Times, Forbes, US News and World Report, Time magazine, and Discover magazine. In 2010 Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people.
She has also authored over 400 articles in both scientific journals and livestock periodicals on animal handling, welfare, and facility design. She is the author of Thinking in Pictures, Livestock Handling and Transport, Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals and Humane Livestock Handling. Her books Animals in Translation and Animals Make Us Human were both on the New York Times best seller list. Her life story has also been made into an HBO movie Temple Grandin, starring Claire Danes.
