Temple Grandin, Joy Mench to Be Featured Speakers at Symposium on Food Animal Well-Being

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Temple Grandin on the cover of her book, The Way I See it, and Joy Mench, director of the Center for Animal Welfare.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Temple Grandin, a nationally known designer of livestock handling facilities, and Joy Mench, director of the University of California-Davis Center for Animal Welfare, will be featured speakers during the Center for Food Animal Wellbeing’s fourth annual symposium Aug. 7 on advances and current issues in food animal well-being. The center is a unit of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture and the University of Arkansas.

Grandin, a Colorado State University animal science professor, will be speaking on animal behavior and welfare. Mench will present her thoughts on the layer industry of the future. The event will be held in Old Main’s Giffels Auditorium on the University of Arkansas campus. Registration is $25. Those planning to attend should register by July 31.

Grandin teaches courses on livestock behavior and facility design at Colorado State and consults with the livestock industry on facility design, livestock handling and animal welfare. In 2010, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people. She has authored more than 400 articles in both 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" and "Humane Livestock Handling." Her books Animals in Translation and Animals Make Us Human were both on the New York Times best seller list.

Grandin has designed facilities located in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and other countries. Curved chute and race systems that 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 to reduce stress on their animals during handling. Grandin has also developed an objective scoring system for assessing handling of cattle and pigs at meat plants. This scoring system is being used by many large corporations to improve animal welfare.

Mench has served on numerous committees and boards related to farm and laboratory animal welfare, including the animal welfare advisory committees of Maple Leaf Farms, the United Egg Producers, McDonald's, Safeway, the Food Marketing Institute and the National Council of Chain Restaurants, as well as National Research Council committees on animal biotechnology and the use of mammals in neuroscience and behavioral research. In addition, she is involved with the Livestock Welfare Working Group of the World Animal Health Organization; the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization expert committee on capacity building to implement good animal welfare practices; and the Council on Accreditation of the Association for the Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care.

Other speakers presenting at the symposium include Elizabeth Rumley, National Agricultural Law Center at the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture; David Newman, North Dakota State University; Janeal Yancy, University of Arkansas; Mark Cooper, Cobb-Vantress Inc.; the Farm Foundation; and Paige Glover, Aviagen Poultry.

Yvonne Vizzier Thaxton, director for the Center for Food Animal Wellbeing, said the goal for the Center for Food Animal Wellbeing is to improve animal health, animal handling, food safety and productivity by developing and defining objective measurements of wellbeing including measures of behavior, stress physiology, neurophysiology, immunology, microbiology and production efficiency.

Registration information and the program are online at the symposium website. The deadline to register is July 31.