Temple Grandin et al

The New York Times weighed in yesterday with another article about the consequences of closing the slaughter plants in the United States. According to the article, many horses sold at auction are now being transported across the borders to slaughterhouses in Mexico and Canada, adding insult to injury in the form of grueling travel. To make matters worse, the article cites the slaughter conditions in Mexico and Canada as being even worse than those in the United States and quotes Temple Grandin, a well known figure in the world of animal welfare as saying "her worst nightmare has happened."

The Fans of Barbaro have weighed in heavily with their responses to the article, many of them directed toward Dr. Grandin. Before I tackle that, I should tell you that the bills pending in Congress ban the transport of live animals across state borders for slaughter, but we all know how long those bills have been making the rounds of the Congressional chambers.

As for Dr. Grandin, she is indeed an interesting figure. The author of numerous books about autism (from which she suffers) and animal welfare (for which she claims to be an advocate), she has made a career out of combining the two. According to Grandin, her autism enables her to see the world in pictures, which she claims is remarkably akin to the way in which animals view the world. She acts as a consultant to livestock slaughter facilities, helping them design methods of leading cows to slaughter that are more humane, at least from the animals' points of view. I read her book, Animals in Translation, in which she outlines the methods she uses to develop less slippery flooring and more open waiting pens for example which she says alleviates some of the anxiety felt by cattle being herded to slaughter.

The Fans of Barbaro are not buying any of it, most of them saying that animals can smell and sense death, slippery floor or not. The only solution would be to end mass slaughter completely of all livestock (Read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma for a description of "humane slaughter" of chickens to understand the difference) and to, of course, ban the transport of livestock across state borders, which they are trying to do.

The age old problem of our intricate relationship with animals has confounded philosophers for years. It is hard to rationalize our dependency on the animals who are dependent on us but short of reverting to a hunter/gatherer existence, we are pretty much stuck.

I'm sure I'll hear from you with regard to this issue on which no one seems to be passive.