Forum - Stowarzyszenie Empatia

Wątek związany z Temple Grandin, autystyczną profesorką zajmującą się sztuką projektowania eksterminacji zwierząt, już się pojawiał na forum. Przypominam, że trochę pokręcona organizacja PETA przyznała jej kiedyś specjalną nagrodę za ułatwianie rzezi zwierzętom i przemysłowi mięsnemu. Zapraszam do wysłuchania wywiadu radiowego z Grandin, zatytułowanego "How Autism Can Help Us Understand Animals".

Opis ze strony z wywiadem:

Temple Grandin is one of the nation's top designers of livestock facilities — and she also happens to be a person with autism. She uses her personal experience with the disorder to develop better ways to understand and communicate with animals.

Grandin tells Terry Gross that animals have emotions, including "fear, rage, separation anxiety and seeking." One of her first assignments as a consultant to the livestock industry was designing humane chutes to get the cows to slaughter, a task that drew on her understanding of the animal brain:

"[I] had to really understand how animals process information and how their senses compare to human senses because some things that would upset animals wouldn't upset us," she explains.

An associate professor at Colorado State University, Grandin is the author of Animals Make Us Human and Animals in Translation.

Mam do zaproponowania kolejny wywiad z Grandin, ulubienicy PETA. Dla zachęty kilka cytatów z części pierwszej:

"Let's go back to the animals for a minute, if you don't mind. You've translated your ability to understand animals into more humane treatment in livestock pens and the meat packing industry.

One of the things that I started looking at very early in my career was all the little things that animals are afraid of. You know I'd get down in the chutes and I could see that the cattle would balk at a shadow, or a shiny reflection, or a chain hanging down and all these things that people tend to not notice. And if you removed these things from the facility, then the animals are going to walk right up the chute.

(...)

People may wonder why it's so important to be humane when, in the end, the animals are still dead and we eat them.

Well, it causes pain if you're not nice to them. I mean you wouldn't say to this person "It only takes a second to yank out a tooth so we're not going to use any anesthetics".

I z części drugiej:

'What launched your interest in humane treatment of livestock in the first place? You could have become a radical vegetarian or militant animal welfare activist instead.

Well, I don't function very well if I don't eat meat. I also got to thinking, that it's really unnatural to be totally vegan. I agree that you don't need to eat ten pounds of steak a day; I'd agree with that. I feel very strongly that we got to give the animals that we raise for food a good life.

(...)

You know you think the dairy industry has a good image but there have been some real problems with pushing dairy cows so much for production they fall apart metabolically. There are lots of dairies that do a good job but there are some dairies that do a bad job. Lameness in dairy cows is up to 25%. That's just terrible.

(...)

You've maximized your gift to accomplish something substantial - now 1/3 of all the meat processed in the US uses systems that you designed.

It's half. Half the cattle in the US and Canada are handled on equipment that I've designed at the large meat plants.

Can you explain a little about the systems that you've designed?

I designed a thing called center track conveyor system that was replaced an older type conveyor system and works better than the older system. The cattle walk up a ramp and they straddle a moving conveyor. There were a lot of visual things that I had to design into it. I had to make sure that when the cattle entered this thing that they couldn't see that the unit was eight feet above the floor because if they saw that visual cliff effect, they wouldn't walk in. And lighting was real critical. If the entrance was too dark, they wouldn't go in.

What did you do about the cliff effect?

You put in a false floor so when they're straddling the conveyor belt and riding it, the false floor is going to be about a foot below where their feet are. And cattle have poor depth perception so they have the illusion that they can walk on the floor but when they get in they find out that they're high-centered and the next thing they know they're just riding along and just following each other.

Cattle are great followers for following a leader and they just follow each other. When things are working right, it's very calm. In fact, the pass they audit is scored with a scoring system that I developed called the American Meat Institute Guideline. In order to pass McDonald's audit, for example, they've got to be able to move 100 cattle through this system and get them stunned and have only three animals out of 100 moo and balk. Back in the bad old days, sometimes you'd have half of the animals mooing and bellowing because there woud be so much going on.

That's a huge improvement.

Yes, it's a huge improvement. Things can really be done right. I've taken a lot of non-industry people through a plant and I've had them just watch the cattle go up the chute and they go “Oh, they walk up the chute quietly” and I say “That's the way it should be.” It shouldn't be a great big horrible mess'.

Nie wiem czy w ogóle to komentować, to połączenie wrażliwości na szczegóły techniczne procesu przemysłowej rzezi, próby odgadnięcia sposobu postrzegania ofiar, dążenia do usprawnienia rzezi, to wszystko razem jest jakieś strasznie pokręcone i przerażające.

gzyra napisał(a):Nie wiem czy w ogóle to komentować, to połączenie wrażliwości na szczegóły techniczne procesu przemysłowej rzezi, próby odgadnięcia sposobu postrzegania ofiar, dążenia do usprawnienia rzezi, to wszystko razem jest jakieś strasznie pokręcone i przerażające.

Mam podobne odczucia, jakiś koszmar po prostu. Trochę skojarzyło mi się z tym wideoklipem.

Jak przeczytałam jej książkę "Animals in Translation", pomyślałam, że Temple Grandin zatrudniona do projektowania urządzeń do zabijania zwierząt w rzeźni jest jak profesorka judaistyki zatrudniona do projektowania komór gazowych dla Żydów.

Najgorsze w tym wszystkim jest to, że ona wydaje się autentycznie uważać, że robi coś dobrego i słusznego. Dostała w końcu mega poparcie ze strony PETA, która dała tej kobiecie za jej "zasługi" tytuł Wizjonerki roku 2004 w ramach nagród PETA Progress Awards. Oto co PETA nazwała postępem. Włos się jeży na głowie.

Zamiast propagować wyłącznie weganizm (ogólnie pozytywny, pełen szacunku stosunek do zwierząt), PETA nagradzając taki "postęp" jak poprawiony design rzeźni relatywizuje weganizm (nazywany raczej wegetarianizmem). On już nie jest właściwym etycznym wyborem. Jest przedstawiony jako opcja (dla wytrwałych?) obok prawie "happy meat" (opcja dla zwykłego obywatela?). Zresztą, jak sami przyznają, nie jest to całkiem happy meat, bo Temple Grandin może zna się na zwierzętach, ale cudotwórczynią nie jest i może co najwyżej usprawnić proces zabijania zwierząt nieco go skracając, nie zaś wyeliminować strach, ból i cierpienie z rzeźni.

Na dodatek Temple wychodzi naprzeciw wymaganiom koszer, gdzie zwierzęta zostają pozbawione nawet możliwości ogłuszenia, i tam też radośnie projektuje swoje udoskonalenia, które dają konsumentom kolejne usprawiedliwienie: "przecież są zwierzęta rzeźne i zwierzęta domowe; przecież w rzeźni są odpowiednie urządzenia i tam to się odbywa prawidłowo, nie to co przydomowe zabijanie psów na smalec."

Visionary
Winner: Dr. Temple Grandin

Renowned animal scientist Dr. Temple Grandin doesn't seem like the sort of person who would receive PETA's Proggy Award. An associate professor of animal science at Colorado State University, Dr. Grandin consults with the livestock industry and the American Meat Institute on the design of slaughterhouses! However, Dr. Grandin's improvements to animal-handling systems found in slaughterhouses have decreased the amount of fear and pain that animals experience in their final hours, and she is widely considered the world's leading expert on the welfare of cattle and pigs.

Recently, following a PETA undercover investigation, Dr. Grandin's expertise was instrumental in securing significant improvements in the treatment of animals at AgriProcessors, the world's largest glatt kosher slaughterhouse. Noting that incompetent kosher slaughterers and shoddy quality control at AgriProcessors are giving shechitah a bad name, Dr. Grandin said about the abuses at AgriProcessors, "I thought it was the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen. I couldn't believe it. I've been in at least 30 other kosher slaughter plants, and I had never ever seen that kind of procedure done before."

Pozostają pytania:
Naprzeciw jakim oczekiwaniom wymagających klientów wyjdzie jeszcze Temple? Może urządzenia do mniej bolesnego tuczenia gęsi na stłuszczone wątroby?
Za jakie usprawnienia machiny zabijania przyzna swoje kolejne nagrody PETA?
Jak to się przekłada na propagowanie praw zwierząt i etycznego weganizmu?
Jak długo ludzie przywiązani do pozytywnych działań PETA (mają ich przecież trochę na swoim koncie) nie będą zauważać tych negatywnych i na każdą akcję PETA będą krzyczeć "Hurra!" ?

Zachęcam do przeczytania artykułu "Going to slaughter: Should animals hope to meet Temple Grandin?" prof. Marca Bekoffa, którego książkę "O zakochanych psach i zazdrosnych małpach. Emocjonalne życie zwierząt" właśnie wydał Znak. Polecam regularną lekturę tekstów Bekoffa na jego blogu Animal Emotions na stronach psychologytoday.com.

Fragmenty jego tekstu o Grandin, projektantce rzeźni, która tak podoba się przedsiębiorstwu o nazwie PETA:

(...) let's consider the question, should the animals look to Grandin to make their lives better before they're made into unneeded meals? (also see) Even if we assume that some - likely a very few - people must eat meat, they surely don't have to eat the meat that comes from factory farmed animals who are treated as mere objects on the long road to their ignominious death. Their dignity as sentient beings is compromised every step of the way and we should all be ashamed that factory farms even exist - but they do. I wonder if anyone would trade places with a factory-farmed animal or allow their companion dog or cat to trade places with these individuals whose lives are doomed. If not, we need to know why. Dogs, cats, cows, pigs, and sheep are all sentient beings and they all have rich and deep emotional lives. Why do we protect dogs and cats but allow other beings to become our meals? (...)

It's not inevitable that factory farms have to exist. We allow them to exist because of the choices we make about who - not what - we put into our mouth. If I were a factory-farmed animal I would not look to Grandin to make my life better because the odds are that even if my life was slightly better it still would be a horrible one at best, marked by interminable fear, terror, and anxiety. What a blight it is on humanity to allow animals to be treated this way. Shame on us. We can make the world a more compassionate place and increase our compassion footprint by simply choosing not to eat meat. Nonhuman and human animals would benefit if we lived in a more compassionate and empathic world where the dignity of all beings was cherished and each and every life was respected.

Trochę drażni to skupianie się na chowie przemysłowym, bo przecież w rzeźniach kończą również zwierzęta żyjące wcześniej w innych warunkach. Przy okazji polecam także wpis na innym blogu - "Temple Grandin: Savant or Professional Killer?", fragmenty:

In her book, Animals Make Us Human, Grandin states that, "I vividly remember the day after I had installed the first center-track conveyor restrainer in a plant in Nebraska, when I stood on an overhead catwalk, overlooking vast herds of cattle in the stockyard below me. All these animals were going to their death in a system that I had designed. I started to cry and then a flash of insight came into my mind. None of the cattle that were at this slaughter plant would have been born if people had not bred and raised them. They would never have lived at all" (p. 297).

Jeffrey Masson, author of When Elephants Weep, seems to have hit the nail on the head with the troubling issue behind Grandin’s work in his review of the book: Temple Grandin Brings Me to Tears (of Frustration). It’s that, “she can never take the next step to questioning what she does.”

Her flash of insight “seems to have pacified her conscience forever! One moment of true insight, when she cried, was quickly stifled by a dumb cliché. It is an argument used by many people who become very annoyed if you say that we wouldn't want our children born into a world where they would be murdered, no matter how humanely or painlessly, after having lived for just a few months or years.”

“Dr. Grandin never asks the only relevant question here: Is it right to do this at all?” (...)

Are people just using oxymoronic terms like “humane slaughter,” “compassionate carnivore” and “ethical meat eater” to ease their conscience and stifle their tears as quickly as Grandin?

gzyra napisał(a):Jeffrey Masson, author of When Elephants Weep, seems to have hit the nail on the head with the troubling issue behind Grandin’s work in his review of the book: Temple Grandin Brings Me to Tears (of Frustration). (...)

Recenzja książki Grandin napisana przez Massona dostępna jest na stronie http://animals.change.org

Na blogu PETA wpis "Temple Grandin: Helping the Animals We Can't Save" autorstwa Ingrid Newkirk, szefowej PETA:

But I applaud Dr. Grandin for another reason, one that has angered some people who work in animal protection: I admire her work in the field of humane animal slaughter. (...) I completely understand the appeal of battle cries such as "Not bigger cages—empty cages!" and I encourage every kind soul who shares this sentiment to make a difference by going vegan. But, as Dr. Grandin has shown us, giving a little comfort and relief to animals who will be in those cages their whole lives is worth fighting for, even as some of us are demanding that those cages be emptied.

Całość na tej stronie.

Kochanowicz również poświęcił jeden z wpisów Grandin: "A stairway to heaven".

Obrazek

Those words you see above, "a stairway to heaven" were used by someone who was referring to a delivery system which sent animals to their deaths. Afterwards, their carcasses are taken apart to become food, chemicals, and materials for human consumption. (...)

The sentiment of animal welfare groups is that people like Grandin accomplish "baby steps," or another convoluted metaphor to claim that improving the welfare of exploitation, one is stepping forward, towards animal rights. Most animal advocates accept this at face value by the truism that less suffering is better than lots of suffering. The situation is far more complicated. First, we should do away with comparing suffering. Is there less suffering in Grandin's slaughterhouses? Animals raised for slaughter do not understand what is happening to them. On Grandin's machines which she barbarically calls stairways to "heaven" hold up animals by their chest towards a machine which will end their life. I don't care how fast or gentle the process is, this animal does not understand, she is confused, she cannot move or protect herself. Whether or not she experiences a great deal of pain, or a quick shot to the head, this animal wanted to live and she had her life taken away all for the sake of some flesh, glue, chemical, or clothing for us. Would we find this animal thinking of slaughterhouse #2 with a pleasant disposition on her "reformed" treatment? My guess is they do not.

We should also understand that Grandin does not fight the industry in any way. Her machines are lauded by the industry because they improve the economic efficiency of the entire operation. Humane slaughter translates to less carcass damage, improved working conditions, and an overall cost-effective process of yielding animal products. When animal people praise Grandin, we tell the public they are being responsible, that they are making ethical choices by doing the very thing these groups claim to be against in the first place. (...)

Sometime in the future by some means, outside the realm of observation, everything will work out for the best. In the animal movement, this comes in the form of "at leasting" ("Well, at least there is less suffering") or a poetic dialogue of arbitrary metaphors: "gradual steps in the right direction," "baby steps," or "chipping away" without any objective reasoning as to how step 1 gets to step 3.

Więcej na tej stronie.

Z tekstu "Emmy: autystyczna konstruktorka pobiła Spielberga" dowiadujemy się, że:

(...) komentatorzy uznają za największego triumfatora gali film wyemitowany w jednej z sieci kablowych - „Temple Grandin”. Tytuł to imię i nazwisko autystycznej konstruktorki, popularnej postaci w Stanach Zjednoczonych. Gardin zrewolucjonizowała sposób, w jaki traktuje się zwierzęta w rzeźniach przemysłowych. Od dziecka zmaga się z autyzmem. Rozgłos przyniosła jej m.in. wynaleziona przez nią dla siebie samej i innych chorych na autyzm maszyna do przytulania („hug machine”).

Film „Temple Grandin” uzyskał piętnaście nominacji i siedem nagród, w tym trzy za grę aktorską.

Właściwie to nie dziwi mnie ten aplauz dla Grandin, szczególnie, jeśli pochodzi od beneficjentów rzezi. Projektując "lepsze" rzeźnie czyści im sumienia, więc ją za to nagradzają i robią z niej bohaterkę. Właściwie nagradzają siebie, małą Grandin w sobie, która jednocześnie chce więzić, zabijać, zjadać zwierzęta i nie czuć, że robi się coś okrutnego. Na podobnej zasadzie nagradzają też organizacje zajmujące się problemem zwierząt, które zajmują się wyłącznie regulacją rzezi. To właśnie zachowawcze organizacje mają największe budżety, również w Polsce. Porównajcie budżet TOZ czy Vivy! (ze świadomością różnic pomiędzy nimi) z budżetem Empatii.

Nieco inny głos w sprawie Temple Grandin:

Grandin on Assessing Animal Welfare

(...) as long as the meat industry is going to exist, I’m glad Grandin’s out there doing her thing. If an animal is to be slaughtered and I can’t stop it, I’m all in favor of as much terror in those final minutes being removed from the experience as possible.

There are animal advocates who sneer at Grandin’s work, suggesting that to commend her efforts is to give approval to the slaughter of animals. But that’s nonsense; you can oppose animal slaughter with every fiber of your being while still being glad that someone like Grandin is out there making things a little better for the animals you cannot save.

Animal advocates should recognize that every animal who ends up in the slaughterhouse represents a failure on our part. It’s too late to do anything to save that particular animal, so we should commend the work of Grandin while we intensify our own commitment to move people toward plant-based diets.

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