Meat + Poultry - September 2005 - 46

diate crisis, but was instead improving
on a less obvious technology. This time
the grant money came from an even
smaller animal welfare organization,
"which was basically a little old lady
in Florida with a bunch of money. Her
name was Emily Glockler," she says.
"Please don't ask me how to spell
'Glockler,'" she adds. "I'm pretty sure
she's dead now because this was 20
years ago." This "little old lady" came
up with $100,000, which Grandin
would use to get her restrainer system
installed in a plant slaughtering large
cattle. She negotiated a deal with the
Excel beef plant in Schuyler, Neb.,
which is now a subsidiary of Cargill,
Inc., to donate and install the restrainer
system. Plant officials would be responsible for modifying the building to
accommodate the system, and paying
for the ramp.
When introducing new technology
you have to pick the right plant, with
plant managers who are supportive
of something new. "You have to have
plant management that is 100 percent
behind making the thing work. Otherwise they can do things to make sure
it fails."
With bigger, more spirited cattle
other issues came up when incorporating Grandin's system. "I had to figure
out how to make a hold down rack that
blocked the vision of the cattle." If a
half-ton animal doesn't want to go into
the restrainer because it is spooked
over something it sees, there is little
anybody can do to force it to move
forward. It turned out however, that an
impossibly simple solution happened
to be closer than anyone would have
thought. "At first they were throwing a
great big fit and I laid a piece of cardboard across the top of the restrainer
and the cattle popped right down,"
Grandin says. "We were holding 1,200
pound steers in with a little piece of
cardboard because it blocked their vision in just the right place."
Living with new technology
After Grandin and plant engineers
got all the nuts and bolts tightened on

the system at the Schuyler plant, it became clear that the technology would
not be adopted industry wide without
some hand holding. In fact, the next
six plants to install the restrainers,
Grandin made it a point to hover
over the facility until the technology
was in place and running without any
hiccups. It started at the Utica veal
plant, where Grandin says she initially
"lived" at the plant for weeks. "I lived
at the Howard Johnson's motor lodge
for two-and-a-half months," she says,
but most of her time was spent at the
plant, not lounging in her hotel. "I'd
get there at 7 a.m. and be there until
8:30 or 9 at night." After watching
how every day's slaughter shift went,
Grandin would wait until the shifts
ended at 3:30 each day, "then I'd go
out there with the welders trying to fix
stuff. We would change stuff, modify
stuff; we were inventing it
as we went." Details such
as figuring out the design of
the hold-down rack would
start with crude prototypes,
fashioned on the spot. "I'd
be making hold down racks
out of cardboard in the daytime and then at night we'd
make them out of metal."
Toward the end of her stay,
in the last two or three days,
Grandin says she spent less
time on the kill floor and more
in the office, meeting with managers and plant personnel.
And she learned that without
staying close, seemingly minor
details can be overlooked. "In
the second plant (which then
was Beef America's Norfolk,
Neb. slaughter plant), someone
decided to shorten my hold-down
rack," she says. "That was just
disastrous. The first cattle that
went in there just went absolutely
freaking berserk trying to jump
out." Again, using cardboard to
lengthen the hold-down rack was
the immediate fix, which was then
made permanent with metal after the
shift ended.

Grandin's first center track restrainer was
used commercially by a veal processing plant.
The next step was to develop a similar system
for big cattle.
(Photo courtesy of Grandin Livestock Systems, Inc.)

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