Profile


Mary Temple Grandin, PhD (1947) is a US scientist and animal behaviourist. She is a prominent proponent for the humane treatment of livestock for slaughter, and she has authored more than 60 scientific papers on animal behaviour. Dr Grandin is a consultant to the livestock industry and is also an autism spokesperson. She is attached to Colorado State University.


public trust and continue to exist, it must have proactive euthana- sia solutions in place in case of emergencies. The industry, she says, cannot afford the risk of lost public trust associated with methods that do not consider animal welfare first.


Preventing on-farm euthanasia Should a situation like Covid-19 occur again, Dr Grandin believes the number of pigs that may have to be destroyed on the farm can be vastly reduced by changes at large pork plants. There, processing could quickly change to production of either carcass pork or large cuts such as loins, hams, shoulders or bellies. Dr Grandin points out that before the pandemic, there was at least one large US pork plant that was producing whole hog carcasses for export to China. She believes producing carcasses or large cuts could probably be done with less than half the normal number of plant workers. From there, Dr Grandin explains that there are many locations with industrial-sized kitchens and large refrigerated spaces where the pork could be further processed. These include hotels, military bases, educational institutions and prisons. In addition, she notes that truckloads of meat could also be sold in many communities in the US where there are people with the knowledge and tools to quickly cut up a pig carcass. The carcasses and large cuts would al- ready have been inspected by the federal Food Safety Inspection Service/USDA at the processing plants. This sort of planning, says Dr Grandin, would not need to be done at the federal level but only at the regional level in states where there is a large amount of pork production. She does not believe


that government legislation would necessarily be required to en- sure the planning occurs, but it would require the leadership of the major pork industry players.


Smaller plants Dr Grandin also calls, however, for a less-centralised pork slaugh- ter and distribution system with more diversified options. She notes that in normal times, while consumers and companies fa- vour the lower costs and efficiencies of a centralised system with large plants due to the economies of scale, when a disaster hits, decentralised systems prove their worth. “Many people will say big is bad,” she says. “The real problem is that big is fragile.” It’s a positive development that the US Department of Agriculture is currently seeking comments on how to reimagine US agri-food supply chains and also how to target pandemic-related stimulus programmes for “long-term, systemic change that results in food supply chain resilience”. In particular, comments are sought on aspects such as bolstering local and regional food systems and developing new market opportunities. The request for comments closed on 21 May. Whether or not these comments will lead to actual change is any- one’s guess, but in Dr Grandin’s view, “if you have enough prob- lems, if you break too many times, change will happen. People got scared seeing the grocery store shelves stripped and they don’t ever want to see that happen again. And it’s already been happening in beef. I’ve had six people contact me about building small and medium plants, and these plants are getting built.”


▶ PIG PROGRESS | Volume 37, No. 8, 2021 15


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