Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism (23 page)

Understanding these kinds of sensitivities made it possible for me to figure out ways to calm flighty antelope at the zoo when other people were convinced that it was impossible to train them to cooperate during veterinary procedures. These procedures were often very stressful, because the animals had to be either shot with a tranquilizer dart or grabbed by people. Antelope can be trained to accept new procedures and novel sights and sounds if those things are introduced gradually and quietly, while the animals are fed treats. I worked with students Megan Phillips, Wendy Grafham, and Mat Rooney to train nyala and bongo antelope to enter a plywood box willingly and stand still during veterinary procedures such as blood testing and injections. The solid sides on the box provided the animals with a sense of safety and security. While they munched on treats, the veterinarian worked on them. During training, we had to take care to avoid triggering a massive fright reaction in these prey-species animals. They had to be carefully desensitized to the sound and movement of the doors on the box, and to people reaching into the box and touching them.

The crafty animals quickly learned to enter the box to get the treats and then kick the moment a blood test was attempted. To stop this, we withheld the treat until the animal stood still and cooperated. Trainers have to discriminate between kicking because of fear and kicking simply to avoid doing something the animal doesn't want to do. Withholding a feed reward will stop learned kicking, but it will have no effect on kicking or thrashing due to fear.

People who work with nonverbal, low-functioning people with autism must similarly be able to determine whether a tantrum or other bad behavior is caused by fear or pain or is a learned avoidance response. Sometimes it's because of pain from sounds that hurt their ears or fear of an unexpected change in routine. Like the cattle and the antelope, autistics are afraid of the unexpected. But sometimes they throw tantrums simply to get attention or to avoid doing a certain activity or school lesson. In one study, aggression and outbursts were greatly reduced in very severely handicapped autistic adults by giving them an object to hold fifteen minutes before they were scheduled to have lunch or ride on the bus. A spoon was used before lunch, and a toy bus was used before riding on the bus. Touch was the only sense that was not confused by sensory jumbling, and holding the object let these people get mentally ready for the next event in their daily routine. There were times when I threw a big tantrum just to watch the grownups react. Observant teachers can tell the difference between a massive fear reaction and the calculated use of bad behavior to avoid tasks the person does not want to do.

People Problems

Mistreatment by people is the number-one cause of animals becoming frightened. The best equipment in the world is worthless unless management controls the behavior of plant employees. When I first started designing equipment, I naively believed that if I could design the perfect system, it would control employee behavior. This is not possible, but I have designed equipment that requires very little skill to operate, provided employees are gentle. Good engineering is important, and well-designed facilities provide the tools that make low-stress, quiet handling at slaughter possible, but employees must operate the system correctly. Rough, callous people will cause distress to animals even if they use the best equipment.

Management attitude is the most important variable that determines how animals are treated. I wouldn't be surprised if this were true of any organization. Livestock handling has greatly improved during the past ten years, and managers are becoming more sensitive about animal welfare, but there still needs to be improvement. It is very painful for me to watch somebody abuse an animal, especially when it happens in one of my systems. Some people buy new equipment and think that it is a substitute for good management. Over the years I have seen animal handling improve with a change in management, and I have seen it get rough and nasty when a good manager left. A good manager serves as a conscience for the employees. He has to be involved enough to care but not so involved that he becomes numb and desensitized. One cannot rely on the foreman to enforce good behavior. This person often becomes immune to animal suffering on the slaughter floor. The manager who enforces good animal handling is usually most effective if he is at the plant-manager level. Someone in a distant headquarters office is often too detached from the reality of the slaughter floor to be concerned.

Plants that have high standards of animal welfare enforce strict codes of conduct. One manager built his office so that he could see the stockyards and the cattle ramp that led into the plant. If he saw employees hitting or whipping the cattle, he called the foreman. Employees who handle thousands of animals often become careless and hard. The people who actually kill the animals should be rotated, and complete automation of the actual killing procedure is good for employee well-being. Automation of killing is especially important in very high-speed plants, with rates of over 150 cattle per hour. A person becomes a zombie when he has to shoot thousands of cattle every day. At slower speeds one can take pride in doing the job humanely and treat each animal with respect, but at high speeds it's all one can do to keep up with the relentless movement of the line.

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.