Temple Grandin, PhD, is a designer of livestock-handling facilities and a professor of animal science at Colorado State University. She has designed facilities in the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries. In North America, almost half the cattle are handled in a center-track restrainer system that she designed for meat plants. Curved chute and race systems she has designed for cattle are used worldwide, and her writings on the flight zone and other principles of grazing animal behavior have helped many people reduce stress on their animals during handling. She has also developed an objective scoring system for assessing the handling of cattle and pigs at meat plants. This scoring system is being used by many large corporations to improve animal welfare. Other areas of research are cattle temperament, environmental enrichment for pigs, reducing dark cutters and bruises, bull fertility, training procedures, and effective stunning methods for cattle and pigs at meat plants. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Franklin Pierce College and her master’s in animal science at Arizona State University. Dr Grandin received her PhD in animal science from the University of Illinois in 1989. Today she teaches courses on livestock behavior and facility design at Colorado State University and consults with the livestock industry on facility design, livestock handling, and animal welfare. She has appeared on television shows such as 20/20, 48 Hours, Larry King Live, Primetime Live, 60 Minutes, Today, and many shows in other countries. She has been featured in many publications, including People, the New York Times, Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, Time, the New York Times Book Review, and Discover. In 2010, Time named her 1 of the 100 most influential people. Interviews with Dr. Grandin have been on National Public Radio and she gave a 2010 TED lecture titled “The World Needs All Kinds of Minds.” She has also written over 400 articles in scientific journals and livestock periodicals on animal handling, welfare, and facility design. She is the author of Thinking in Pictures, Livestock Handling and Transport, Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals, Guide to Working With Farm Animals, and Humane Livestock Handling. Her books Animals in Translation and Animals Make Us Human were on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Animals Make Us Human was also on the Canadian best-seller list. Her latest book, Calling All Minds, was a New York Times bestseller for middle school students. Her life story has been made into an HBO movie, Temple Grandin, starring Claire Danes; it won 7 Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe. The movie shows her life as a teenager and how she started her career. She was inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame in 2017 and made a fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2018.
