Management also has to be willing to take the time and make the effort to improve handling methods. Employees have to be trained to understand cattle behavior and use the natural instincts of the animals to assist movement. Trained employees learn to time groups of animals so that they will follow the leader. Each group must be driven up to the single-file alley just as the last animal from the previous group is walking into it. If the next group is driven up too quickly, the cattle or hogs will turn around, because there is no place to go. I love nothing more than to watch a plant I've designed run smoothly and efficiently, knowing that the animals are being treated with decency.
I'm always surprised at the number of people who think that the “jungle” still exists at the Chicago stockyards. The Chicago stockyards have been gone for more than thirty years. When I discuss my job with fellow travelers on airplanes, many ask if a sledgehammer is still used. That was banned by the Humane Slaughter Act in 1958 in all meat plants that sold to the U.S. government. In 1978 the act was strengthened to cover all federally inspected plants that sell meat in interstate commerce. The Humane Slaughter Act requires that cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats must be instantaneously rendered insensible to pain prior to slaughter. The act does not cover poultry or ritual slaughter by any religious faith. The law requires that animals are rendered insensible to pain by either captive bolt stunning, electrical stunning, or CO2 gas. Captive bolt kills the animal instantly by driving a steel bolt into the brain. It has the same effect as a gun. Electrical stunning causes instantaneous unconsciousness by passing a high-amperage electrical current through the brain. It works the same way as electroconvulsive shock treatment in people. If the procedure is done correctly the animal becomes instantly unconscious.
People often ask me if animals are afraid of blood. Again it's the small distractions that scare the animals more than blood. Blood or urine from relatively calm cattle appears to have no effect, but blood from cattle that have become very frightened may contain a “smell of fear” substance. If the cattle remain relatively calm they will voluntarily walk into a chute with blood on it. But if an animal becomes severely stressed for over five minutes the next animal will often refuse to enter.
Design of Restraint Equipment
Many people who design systems to restrain animals don't think about what the device will feel like to the animal. Some engineers are strangely unaware that a sharp edge will dig and hurt. They build devices that mash the animal or dig into it. Restraint equipment used to hold cattle or hogs for either veterinary work or slaughter often squeezes the animal too hard or holds it in an uncomfortable position. One of the reasons I am good at designing this equipment is that I can visualize what the device will feel like. I can put myself into a twelve-hundred-pound steer's body and feel the equipment. What would it be like with a gentle person operating it? What would it be like with a rough person operating it? When I see somebody squeeze an animal too hard in a squeeze chute, it makes me hurt all over.
One of my crusades in the meat industry has been to eliminate shackling and hoisting as a method of restraint in kosher slaughter plants. The main animal welfare problem with kosher slaughter is the dreadful methods of restraint used in some plants. The variable of the restraint method must be separated from the variable of the actual shehita kosher cut, which is performed on a fully conscious animal. In kosher slaughter, a special, razor-sharp, long straight knife is used. When the cut is made correctly according to the rules outlined in the Talmud, the animal does not appear to feel it. The Talmud states that there cannot be any hesitation during the cut and the incision must not close back over the knife. The knife must have a perfect blade and be free of nicks, because a nick would cause pain.
I will never forget having nightmares after visiting the now defunct Spencer Foods plant in Spencer, Iowa, fifteen years ago. Employees wearing football helmets attached a nose tong to the nose of a writhing beast suspended by a chain wrapped around one back leg. Each terrified animal was forced with an electric prod to run into a small stall which had a slick floor on a forty-five-degree angle. This caused the animal to slip and fall so that workers could attach the chain to its rear leg. As I watched this nightmare, I thought, “This should not be happening in a civilized society.” In my diary I wrote, “If hell exists, I am in it.” I vowed that I would replace the plant from hell with a kinder and gentler system.
Ten years ago I was hired by the Council for Livestock Protection in New York to develop a humane upright restraint system for kosher calves. The council was a consortium of major animal advocacy groups such as the Humane Society of the United States, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,the Fund for Animals, the Massachusetts SPCA, the American Humane Association, and others. It was formed in the early seventies to replace shackling and hoisting with more humane methods of restraint. At this time, upright restraining equipment existed for kosher slaughter of large cattle, but no equipment was available for calves or sheep. When the Humane Slaughter Act was passed in 1958, kosher slaughter was exempted, because no humane alternatives to shackling and hoisting of fully conscious animals existed.
Walter Giger, Don Kinsman, and Ralph Prince, at the University of Connecticut, had demonstrated that a calf can be restrained in a comfortable manner when it straddles a moving conveyor. The animal rides the conveyor like a person riding a horse, supported under the belly and chest. Solid sides on each side of the conveyor prevent it from tilting off. The Connecticut researchers had a good idea, but I had to invent many new components to construct a system that would work in a commercial slaughter plant. To make the new system work, I had to eliminate all pressure points which caused discomfort to the animals. For example, uncomfortable pressure on the leg joints caused calves to struggle and fight the restrainer. Elimination of the pressure points resulted in calm, quiet calves.
One of the advantages of a conveyor restraint system for both conventional slaughter, where cattle are stunned, and ritual slaughter is that the cattle move through it in a continuous line. Each animal has its head on the rear of the animal in front of it. Having observed cattle, I realized that they remain calmer when they can touch each other. Since the cattle were in continuous contact with each other, they remained calmer at the slaughter plant than at the squeeze chute at the Colorado State University Experiment Station. I've also observed that cattle are accustomed to walking in single file. An overview of a cow pasture shows the small, twelve-inch-wide cowpaths. Walking in single file is part of the nature of cattle. This is why a system that handles cattle moving through in single file works well.
Many people do not believe me when I tell them that cattle slaughter can be really calm, peaceful, and humane. In some plants, the cattle remain absolutely calm and the employees are very conscientious. At one large plant, 240 cattle per hour quietly walked up the ramp and voluntarily entered the double-rail conveyor restrainer. It was as if they were going in to get milked. Each fat steer walked into the restrainer entrance and settled down on the conveyor like a little old lady getting on the bus. Most animals entered the restrainer when they were patted on the rear end. Since the cattle move through the system in a continuous line, they are never alone and separated from their buddies. At this plant, the system had been beautifully installed and was brightly illuminated. When slaughter is conducted properly, the cattle experience less stress and discomfort than they experience during handling procedures in the veterinary chute.
Being autistic has helped me to understand how they feel, because I know what it is like to feel my heart race when a car horn honks in the middle of the night. I have hyperacute senses and fear responses that may be more like those of a prey-species animal than of most humans. People often fail to observe animals. Recently I visited a slaughter plant where the cattle were terrified of air that hissed from a pneumatically powered gate. Every time the gate opened or closed, the cattle recoiled and backed down the chute. They reacted as if they had seen a rattlesnake. It was obvious
to me that the hissing air scared them but other people failed to see it. Purchase of a few air silencers solved the problem. With the hissing gone, the animals were no longer afraid of the gate. All it took was a cow's eye view.
Update: Troubleshooting Challenging Behavior
The best place to look for an update on my work with animals is in my book, Animals in Translation. I do have a few words on troubleshooting challenging behavior. In both the field of animal behavior and in autism education, the number one mistake is misunderstanding the motivation of behavior. In animal behavior, fear and aggression are often mixed up. Punishing behavior caused by fear often makes it worse. Some people with autism experience massive fear when they experience sensory overload. Yelling at the person is the wrong thing to do when the individual's sensory system is already in a state of overload. The person's fear is going to get worse.
When working with nonverbal people with autism you have to be a good detective to figure out the cause behind a challenging behavior like throwing things or biting people. The first thing that must be ruled out is a hidden medical problem that the person cannot tell you about. If an individual who used to be calm and cooperative suddenly turns violent, pain may be the cause. Heartburn or acid reflux is a common problem in adults with autism. Try some simple remedies such as elevating the head of the bed six inches, not laying down after eating, and medicine for heartburn. Constipation is another common problem. Other painful conditions that can cause behavior problems are dental problems, ear infections, or sinus infections. One quiet little boy had pushed a bean up his nose and he disrupted his class until the bean was removed.
Sensory issues are another trigger of problem behaviors. Suspect sensory sensitivity if the behavior problem occurs right after the individual is moved to a new environment. The fear of getting one's ears blasted by the smoke alarm can trigger a tantrum. If a smoke alarm has previously gone off in the room, the individual may be afraid to go back into that room. The sight of a mobile phone may cause panic because it can ring at any time. Changing the ring tone may help. Fluorescent lights or some other stimuli that the person cannot tolerate are other possibilities.
Troubleshooting Guide for Challenging Behavior in Nonverbal Individuals
Step 1. Look for a painful, hidden medical problem.
Step 2. Look for a sensory reason.
Step 3. If 1 and 2 can be ruled out, look for the behavioral reasons for the challenging behavior.
There are three major behavioral motivators.
1. The person is attempting to communicate.
2. He/she is trying to get attention.
3. The person wants to escape from a task that he/she dislikes.
There are many good books available to help remedy problems with challenging behavior such as the Treasure Chest of Behavioral Strategies. Once you have figured out the motivation, you can develop a behavioral program. If communication is a problem, then the individual may need a communication system such as “Picture Exchange” or a picture board. If a desire for attention is the cause, then ignoring the behavior sometimes works. If the individual is attempting to escape from a task, you must make sure that a sensory sensitivity issue is not the true cause. If there is no sensory issue, then try quietly to direct the person back to the task or change the task to make it more appealing.
Other interventions that can be used are working with an occupational therapist to calm the nervous system and special diets and supplements. Some teenagers and adult individuals will need medication. Doctors must not make the mistake of giving more and more medication every time there is a crisis. A program of vigorous exercise also helps to calm the nervous system. A combination of medical, behavioral, and nutritional/biomedical approaches is usually best.
Fear Associations
A person with autism may panic when he/she sees some common, ordinary thing. Maybe a blue coat evokes fear because the fire alarm went off at the exact moment the blue coat was being put on. The coat then becomes associated with the fire alarm. Sensory-based fear associations are common in animals. I saw a horse that was afraid of black cowboy hats. White cowboy hats and ball caps caused no reactions. The horse feared black hats because he was looking at a black hat when he was abused. Another animal became afraid of the sound of a nylon jacket because it was associated with abuse. These fear memories are stored as pictures, sounds, smells, or touches. Since nonverbal people with autism are sensitive to smells, it is likely that a smell could become associated with an aversive stimulus such as sensory overload at a supermarket. The smell of a new detergent brought into the home could possibly become associated with a “meltdown” in the detergent aisle of a local supermarket.
The problem with severe fear memories is that they can never be erased from the person's memory. A person or animal can learn to overcome a fear. The brain does this by sending a signal down to the amygdale (emotion center) to close the “computer file” of the memory. The file can be closed but it cannot be deleted. In animals, fear memories have a nasty habit of popping back even after the animal has learned to get over its fear. This is especially a problem in high-strung, nervous animals. Sensitive nervous animals that get frightened easily such as Arabian horses can become so traumatized by severe abuse that they may never completely learn to get over their fears. Animals with calmer genetics have an easier time learning to close the file on a fear memory. Making fear memories permanent helps animals to survive in the wild. The ones that forget where they met a lion will not survive.
9
Artists and Accountants
An Understanding of Animal Thought
MANY PEOPLE have been fascinated by the terrific feats of memorization of savants. According to Bernard Rimland, of the Autism Research Institute in San Diego, approximately 9 or 10 percent of people with autism have savant skills. Some are like calendar calculators who can tell you the day of the year for any date; others can perfectly play a piece of music they have heard only once. Another type can memorize every street in a city or every book in a library. There are also savants who can rapidly identify all the prime numbers in a list of numbers, even though they are incapable of doing basic arithmetic calculations. Hans Welling, a researcher in Portugal, speculates that mathematically weak savants may have a method for visually analyzing the symmetry of numbers, which would enable them to distinguish prime from nonprime numbers.
Savants are usually very impaired in learning other skills, such as socializing. One mother told me about her teenage savant son, who could do extraordinary computer programming but simply could not learn the meaning of money. Savants memorize huge amounts of information but have difficulty manipulating the material in meaningful ways. Their memory skills far exceed those of normal people, but their cognitive deficits are great. Some are incapable of making simple generalizations that cattle and other animals make easily.
It is no mystery how the autistic savant depicted in the movie Rain Man beat the casinos in Las Vegas and counted cards in the game of twenty-one. It was simply intense visualization and concentration. The only reason I can 't count cards is that I can no longer concentrate intensely enough. My visualization skill has not changed, but I can no longer hold a single image steady for a long enough period of time. When I visualize equipment, I edit the images like a feature movie. I may visualize the system from a vantage point on the ground, but in the next instant I see it from another perspective. I am no longer able to hold a continuous video in my imagination. I would speculate that the true card-counting savant mind works like a video camera that is fixed to a tripod and continuously records the same scene. The vantage point of the savant 's mind camera remains fixed for relatively long intervals. When the savant 's concentration is locked onto one thing, it is difficult for him to shift attention. If a VCR could be plugged into his brain and his visual memories could be played on a TV, his memory would likely resemble a very long home movie taken from a single, stationary vantage point. This intense ability to hold an image constan
t may also contribute to the rigid and inflexible behavior of most savants.
What interests me most about autistic savants of the extreme type is that they do not satisfy one of Marian Stamp Dawkins 's chief criteria for thinking. Dawkins, a researcher at the University of Oxford, is one of the few specialists who studies thinking in animals. She makes a clear distinction between instinctual behavior and true thinking. Similar to the main operating programs of a computer, instincts are behavior patterns that are programmed in the animal. Some instincts are hard-wired like computer hardware, and others can be modified by experience. An example of instinctual behavior is a calf following its mother. Animals are also capable of learning behavior that is not governed by instincts. For example, cows can quickly learn to line up for milking at 4:00 P.M.But cows lining up at milking time or running after a feed truck are simply responding to straightforward stimulus conditioning. Animals are also capable of learning simple rules of thumb. An animal can remember that he gets food when a green light turns on or he must jump a barrier to avoid a shock when a red light turns on. But to determine whether or not the animal is really thinking requires testing under novel conditions where he cannot use a simple rule of thumb. Numerous studies reviewed by Dawkins clearly indicate that animals can think and are capable of using previously learned information to solve problems presented under novel conditions. Animals have the ability to generalize, even though they do not use language.
Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism Page 20
