KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Temple Grandin, Ph.D., the world’s leading authority on livestock handling and professor of animal science at Colorado State Univ., recently visited Cargill Protein’s new Headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, to commemorate the company’s progress in animal handling. After talking with employees about her life and the evolution of animal handling in the meat and poultry industry, Grandin answered some questions from the media including Editor Joel Crews. 

Crews asked about how she first got her foot in the door at one of her first, and biggest clients and she went on to recall how she mailed drawings of a livestock handling system for a Cargill beef plant in Canada. The plans were noticed by Cargill’s Bill Fielding in the late 1980s and a working relationship was born. 

Crews also asked Grandin and Lacey Alexander, Cargill’s animal welfare lead for beef, about the role of technology in animal handling and welfare, including remote video auditing (RVA), which was implemented by Cargill more than a decade ago. Alexander discussed RVA and steps the company takes to train Cargill employees on the important balance between technology and behavior.