Well, the thing that was interesting. I was involved in taking a lot of executives from McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King out on their very first trips out to farms and meat plants. And you know when the animal welfare issue came up first, they go "Oh, animal welfare. Big hassle. Give it to the lawyers, give it to the public relations department. Make it go away." Then, when I took them out to the plants and things are going right and they're saying "That's not so bad," but when things were going bad, oh, eyes got opened up. They were saying "Whoa. There are some things here that we need to change." In other words, it had gone from being an abstraction that you delegate to the legal department to something real that they needed to do something about. And I was with some of these executives when they had a real shift in their attitude. Like, when they saw half-dead dairy cow headed for their product that really upset them.
So it's the hands-on stuff that makes the difference.
That's right. I took lots of executives - executives from McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King, many executives from different companies - on their first trips to slaughterhouses and it was very interesting to watch eyes get opened up. They see something to send to the legal department finally becomes something real.
Something clicks for them.
That's right.
You've written and spoken about the genetic tinkering that's been done and which has led to some particularly cruel and extreme mutations in the animals that we eat. Could you give some examples?
First of all, the genetic things have been done with old-fashioned breeding; they've not been done with bio-tech. It's just been done with single trait selection for rapid growth in chickens, lots of milk in dairy cows, lots of lean pork in pigs. And they select for rapid growth, lots of lean pork and back fat. And they forgot about the importance of selecting the strong feet and legs. So they ended up with a lot of lame pigs. Or they ended up with pigs that were very aggressive and excitable. No one deliberately wants to have an excitable pig but when you select for that rapid growth and leanness, you tend to select a lean, mean pig.
Because he's always hungry.
Yeah. And chickens had problems with lameness and having what they call flip-over disease, (you know, heart attacks) and this happens when you over-select for a single trait. Look at dogs - they kept selecting for big heads on bull dogs until bull dogs can barely function. I have a next door neighbor who has a bull dog puppy. You just play with him kind of energetically and he gets real tired. And they're saying "Oh, well that's just part of the breed." And I'm going "Well, I think it's abnormal." Why was the breed ever allowed to get into that kind of a mess? You look at a bulldog in the "50s; it was a much more normal looking animal.
Chickens were once more normal looking too, weren't they?
The broilers have been bred to be rapid growth and big breasts. Layers have been bred to crank out a lot of eggs. And layers that are bred to make a lot of eggs tend to peck each other worse and be more cannibalistic. There's always a price. Now, all of these things so far have been done with old-fashioned breeding. There's been artificial insemination involved, but that's not bio-tech. That's been around as long as I've been in the industry.
But it's not healthy for the animals.
No it's not. But I'm not going to call it genetic tinkering because that implies that you actually manipulated genetic material in a lab somehow. No, this has all been done so far just with breeding.
Thanks for the clarification. 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?
