Among Temple's claims to validity is her contention that autism gives her clearer insight into animal behavior and experience, particularly consciousness, pain and social relationships. We do not dispute her claims to uniqueness of view, nor her acknowledgement of animal consciousness as real. And Temple's achievements in reducing animal terror in slaughterhouses are amazing and desirable, though open to other interpretations.
Perhaps you're asking yourself why we should even devote the requisite attention to this evaluation if it’s potentially unpleasant. Her focus is on farm animals and not our pets. Perhaps we should be content with her achievements on livestock handling equipment and go back to our own work. But the stir over her books about consciousness, social behavior and animal nature suggests the urgency for our attention because this sort of impact implies either she's touching something fundamental or there's some ulterior motive in media, or both.
We applaud the demonstrations of animal thinking, right up to and including the claims of genius and brilliance in some animals. Read that for yourselves. As a writer, she's amazingly logical and has many fewer blindspots toward animals than our culture delivers. Be prepared though for the unvarnished views, as she draws them clearly.
We have also read with awe the database of animal and human events in Rupert Sheldrake's books and website. Rupert's theories in biology fitting with these collected events, suggest that animals that are our pets and companions, as well as animals in the wild, can intercept our minds’ images. Why not farm animals? And if so, Temple's assessment that animals in well maintained and managed slaughterhouses don't know what is about to befall them and can be humanely stunned instantaneously to make slaughter totally painfree and fearfree is in need of examination.
Her argument is that if they were aware of the slaughter pending, they would bolt and struggle even in the well maintained and managed slaughterhouses, but they don't. Those nightmare panic events appear to be reserved for places where the facilities are poorly kept and the staff poorly directed. Temple's programs have done this, provided caretaking and surroundings that lead to calm animals walking to slaughter. No apparent fear, so she concludes they have no knowledge.
But does it really necessarily mean the animals are unaware and have no knowledge of what is waiting? It is easily conceivable that they are fully aware, that they see that the caretakers are assiduously looking after them, that pain is to be avoided and that they have the solidarity of their fellows to comfort them. Which says a lot about priorities for survival and understandings, implying potentially some code of stoicism or honor. A possibility like this deserves that we examine this.
Temple maintains that we have unspoken and unwritten social agreements with those with whom we have relationships. What about our relationships with animals. Where would these agreements come from and how did we and they get into them?
Humans were once prey and only later developed predator skills. Our defenses and our hunting abilities reinforced one another as well as establishing our new status in nature. Barbara Ehrenreich's Blood Rites describes these interactions and their implications for war glorification as a driving force in our social dealings.
Our prey ancestry is supported by a realization that our digestive system is not carnivore. We are frugivores because our digestive tract is at least a dozen times as long as our spines, and our intestinal tract is sacculated. Our bodies cannot handle the mechanics even of processing meats, which putrefy in the lengthy processes in our guts, become compacted and generally involve health problems in the simple mechanics. Carnivores have sleek, short digestive tracts roughly only a couple times the length of their spines. That's why they can manage carcasses that are not freshly cleaned and assiduously prepared since their systems eliminate the remains of the meal before the negatives coming in the biochemistry -- beyond the mechanics -- does their damage. The bodies of humans and non-carnivores like rodents have been demonstrated to have limited abilities on the chemical side of digestion to safely process the animal protein and all its residual by-products. In labwork and demographics, as well as clinically, there appears to be an animal products' ceiling of about 5%-10% of our calorie intake that can be dealt with safely by our systems. Beyond that the accumulations of negative biochemical processes reduce our immune systems' abilities to cope with routine exposures in nature as well as genetic predispositions. Mice pushed beyond those limits cannot avoid the consequences of carcinogens and undesirable genetic traits, whereas below those limits they can. See Colin Campbell's China Study for the specifics.
Having taken up hunting, humans sought improvements for its hazards and unreliable production, leading to herding and agriculture generally. In the process of hunting, herding and plant cultivating, we made alliances with some of our fellow prey and small predators, allowing us to domesticate some of them. Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel traces the benefits and differential development rates around the world that resulted as humans engaged in developing their regionally available domesticable animals. Some of our fellow prey and small predators served as companions, as guards, as transport, as engines, as providers of milk and eggs, in exchange for protection and feeding. Somewhere along the way, hunting and herding led to slaughter. Conceivably the benefits to our fellow domesticable prey as well as the hazards of herding and possible slaughter may have outweighed the benefits and hazards of freedom and other predators. At that point a bargain may have effectively taken shape.
In any event, domestication led to breeding for our selective purposes, not theirs, til we now have farm animals totally dependent on our resources. Their ancestors may have been able to manage in the wild with difficulty, but should anything happen to us suddenly, these creatures would probably not survive unless what removed us from the picture also eliminated their adversaries without diminishing nature's ability to rebound rapidly. Chernobyl's deadzone is a demonstration of how nature can thrive once humans are removed from the scene.
If that breeding for docility has reduced animal intelligence as a recent Discover Magazine article suggested, can today's farm animals be held to the agreement as a matter of ethical dealing? On the other hand, if our science knows as little about measuring animal intelligence as they know about human intelligence, the whole issue of domestication and intelligence is voided and we have only Temple's and Rupert's collected observations on intelligence to rely on.
So where does that leave us on the interpretation of calm in the face of slaughter? Clearly some relationship between herder and domesticated animal was developed and we've acknowledged our fellow animals' range of intelligence as well as their ability to read our minds' images. Particularly after seeing the evidence in Rupert's experiments. Look especially at the case of Nkisi when you read The Sense of Being Stared At. If fear of pain is absent due to the ability of the animals to read mental pictures and see the level of assiduous management, is that enough to overcome survival instincts and rely on a samuraic code of conduct? Are there added bases in the comfort of companions in the picture?
Curiously, an observation from a few perceptive friends who watch the reality TV show "Survivors" suggests that humans in a near parallel situation do choose near-peers over hazard. In the diabolic tradition of bad bargains, the show requires that players choose a member of their 'tribe' for exclusion from continuing each week in the game's simulated wilderness extended trial.
In those games, there apparently is a pattern of choosing the most talented individual to distinguish themselves in the recent challenges to be excluded even though that would seem a predictor of subsequent disaster. The strength of the desire not-to-be-excluded seems to reinforce the peer bond relationship. They then choose the comfort of peers over the improved prospects of survival.
Of course we ourselves have been bred and indoctrinated for a century and a half of compulsory, age-segregated schooling so it's not clear whether this choice would apply among independent, school-free social groups, nor among our wild animals. Surely the contests among wild males for group leadership of their herd or clans, though seldom fatal, has been suggested to be demonstration that wild and training-free animals choose talented life over peer relationships. Of course they are not governed by the diabolic game entirely and other research shows that the secondary males are very successful at reproducing in spite of non-dominance, maybe even moreso than the males pre-occupied with dominance. On the other hand there are the lemmings. Maybe even the whales that beach together.
Farm animals could therefore seem to fit the conjecture that the calm before slaughter may actually be reassurance of conscious knowledge of painfree caretaker handling and the comfort of peer solidarity.
Temple is clearly right about the importance of fear over pain, as she demonstrated by the example of the switch from pain response to defensive behavior in the bull that was suffering from castration but immediately rose to face approaching humans. (How can veterinarians even think of doing such monstrosities without pain-relief! But then again contemporary doctors have practiced circumcision on infant boys without pain-relief for the innocent til relatively recently.) But Temple seems to have overlooked the impact of the comfort of companionship in the absence of pain as well as the samuraic code of honoring an ancient contract.
And while we're thinking about their bravery and comradeship when the likelihood of handling slipups is eliminated, maybe we should also tally up our animal protein intakes and ask why we pursue this demand from our farm animals. Especially when this shortterm gratification in supposed luxury diet leads to longterm sickness and suffering as well as early death. Even the vendors of meat are recognizing that the reduction in stress hormones from bad handling at slaughtertime, is worth the extra costs to their clients. Without even touching the hideous and ethically repugnant subject of factory farm type abuses of the animals as being detrimental to our health through chemical impacts on meat quality.
On top of that health question, on top of the equity question, stands the realization that animal husbandry is more oil-intensive than no-till agriculture and its other organic variations. Research at the agricultural engineering colleges has shown considerable comparability in the productivity of low-oil agriculture, particularly when you factor in longterm dwindling fertility and even losses of usable soil under the contemporary forced, oil-intensive food growing. With oil becoming ever more price-volatile and ultimately requiring infrastructure changes, we as individuals will naturally eventually be making choices. Among those experimenting in alternative lifestyles, the low meat to no meat alternatives, as well as the decentralized agriculture concepts have made promising headway. In the city, the concept of metro-farming is being explored. with the requisite clearing and sharing of land for gardening. Suburban laws with noxious regulations on what owners can and cannot grow are similarly due for removal and rethinking.
Which leaves our companion carnivores, primarily cats but dogs also though they are already omnivores. We've resorted to wildcaught fish processed at freezing temperatures for our cats. Nature doesn't frown on carnivores though they are vulnerable not only to carnivore hazards but also to the variations in prey populations due to omnivore and herbivore hazards. It would seem preferable to choose TNR (Trap, Neutre, Release) as well as enhancing the entire habitat for our human-friendly animals, which would not only sustain the lives of our companions as well as the birds and little critters, but would also give ourselves and our children more leafy, nature-guided environments, precisely the environments that were recently shown to undo tendencies to ADHD type disabilities, environments that have become less common in our denuded landscapes. Leafy, ragged edged beauty.
Which leaves the question of how do we humanely get from where we are to where we should be, certainly ultimately. Each of us is individual, and our lives and resources vary. Just keep the principles in mind, find a step or two to try. Some things work better than others for you or me or others. If we simply keep the targets in mind and keep whittling, we can get there. And remember if you, your family and your companion animals all eat more raw foods, you actually require less food overall, in fact for pure raw food diets, balanced of course, you need only half the caloric intake. Our cat survived a deadly case of hepatic lipidosis because we switched his diet to totally raw meats since his body -- compromised by HL -- had limited ability to process the foods we could get in him. He's more lively and energetic now than ever. So maybe now the cats will cancel their strike, as soon as I post this.
Temple's publications
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Emergence: Labeled Autistic
Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports from My Life with Autism
Animals in Translation
Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships
Visual Thinking, Sensory, Careers and Medications
Developing Talents
