My column in The Kerryman. 13 March, 2013
I watched a film recently, starring Claire Danes. It’s a true story about an autistic woman, called Temple Grandin. I’d thought it’d be about a woman with mental health issues, who was extremely intelligent and who’d an interest in animals. I assumed it would be a feel-good movie, describing Temple overcoming her difficulties, integrating into society and who would now be running an animal shelter somewhere in rural America.
I was very wrong. The film is about the limits of normal. How the majority of us, who are ‘normal’ make life so very difficult for those who just don’t fit in. How unkind we can be and how people like Temple have to battle all their lives to find their place in our world. In this film we have the good fortune to witness Temple reshaping the world, so that it better fits her.
That is however, less remarkable than the career she chose for herself and in which she had to battle hard for recognition. To be honest, if it wasn’t a true story, it would seem too farfetched to make a film about. Temple Grandin is famous in the American cattle industry, for designing cutting-edge (pardon the pun) factory-sized slaughterhouses.
She did this by conducting a detailed study of cattle behaviour and psychology. In America, cattle are herded for slaughter in their tens of thousands. The scope for chaos and the loss of stock is huge. Temple, with her study of cattle, worked out how to take the stress out the entire process. The cattle’s stress that is, so every cow walks calmly and willingly to the bolt in the head. Stress free for the unfortunate cattle, but most importantly, expense free for the ranchers and processors.
‘Stress free’ must seem like a dream for famers and meat processors in Kerry today, who despite our politicians going on about ‘knowledge economy’ this and ‘broad band connectivity’ that, continue to be vital to our economy. Temple Grandin believes that there is nothing immoral about eating meat, but that we owe the animals something in return. Not gratitude exactly, not even kindness as such, but respect. Our animals are conceived, raised, slaughtered and consumed, all on our say so. They exist because of us, and our appetites are sated and our export euros roll in, because of them.
To treat them only as products, fails to respect and accept that they are living things. This is not the first step to vegetarianism, oh the horror, but failing to acknowledge that these creatures, we own and eat are alive, diminishes a part of what we are. We risk losing a portion of our empathy to the pressure of profit.
Worse than the farmer hardening his heart, is the rest of us deluding ourselves about price. In a rural county like Kerry, it is inexcusable for any of us to expect meat to be cheap. Even in a recession, meat costs a lot because animals cannot be cajoled into growing faster and bigger, with less food and shelter. There are drugs and hormones and in time there will be gene manipulation, but there are some costs never worth paying.
Pig rearing units must now take into account the mental wellbeing of their sows, even though the cost of feed is always going up. Chicken growers must allow their hens space to move, as the cost of heating increases. Meat is only ever going to cost more.
We can accept that, or if we think even horse burgers still aren’t cheap enough, then remember that last year in Ireland, 5000 stray and abandoned dogs were put to sleep.
