SHE has helped to change world thinking on autism, consulted to some of the most powerful companies on animal welfare issues, was named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in 2010 and even been the subject of a self-titled Hollywood movie, but through it all Temple Grandin has remained true to herself.
Spend a smidgeon of time with her and it's abundantly clear the opinions of this forthright 72-year-old, from Colorado, United States, can't be bought and won't be swayed except through her own experiences, observations and research.
The prolific author and professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, was in WA last week to work with Andrew and Nicola Forrest's Minderoo Group as a consultant to their Harvest Road beef industry expansion plans and also attended the 100th anniversary celebrations of their Harvey Beef processing works.
It's not the first time Dr Grandin has worked with Australian beef entities, having previously consulted to the likes of Teys Brothers and JBS Swift at processing works in the Eastern States.
As Harvest Road sets about building a 60,000 head capacity feedlot with expected annual throughput of 200,000 cattle at Koojan, in WA's central Midlands, Dr Grandin has been employed to provide advice on site and facility design and animal welfare best practice.
Her tour to date included visits to Harvey Beef, Harvey, to Minderoo station, Onslow and to the Koojan site, west of Moora, and she was impressed with what she saw but had plenty of common sense advice to offer.
"The single most important thing in building a feedlot is to get the site works and the drainage right," Dr Grandin said.
"Spend the money and slope those pens two to three per cent away from the feed troughs and slope the entire yard so it will drain.
"Cattle cannot be standing in a mudhole, which is a food safety issue as well as a welfare issue.
"And animals need shade in your hot climate which is similar to Arizona, where I first started working.
"We get up to 115oF (46oC) there and we have shade in all our feedlot pens.
"Shadecloth is fine but it needs to be stretched board tight on a stout frame so it can't move and tear and allowing room for the shade to be accessed fully with the movement of the sun.
"There should be enough area for every animal to be able to fit in the shadow."
Other things such as keeping pens clean and dust free were also important.
Dr Grandin advocated using improved genetics especially for desirable traits such as heat tolerant breeds but warned against narrowing the gene pool too much.
And she voiced concern about pushing biology too far with regard to muscling and carcase attributes at the expense of legs and structure (like what happened in the broiler chicken industry many years ago).
"I have heard of bulls of different breeds being taken into environments they are not suited to and they didn't do well, so this is where using semen would be better," she said.
On the issue of animal activism, Dr Grandin said there would always be people against the raising of animals for food.
"Everybody has a mobile phone these days so anybody can take any sort of pictures they want,'' she said.
"The thing is to not do anything you can't defend or give them any opportunity to film bad stuff.
"If you don't do anything bad they have nothing to photograph.
"When you are getting bashed (on issues like this) that is the time to open the door (to transparency) not shut it.
"There is nothing wrong with raising animals for food provided they are managed well, have a good life and are humanely slaughtered.
"I get attacked all the time because I design slaughter houses but it's about doing things right.
"That's why I introduced the center track restrainer system."
The system features a central double railing in a chute whereby animals walk down a cleated nonslip ramp into the chute and become positioned in the box straddling the railing and resting on their brisket and belly with their feet and legs suspended as they are moved slowly along by conveyor belt past a stun box where they are killed by single action bolt.
Dr Grandin said there were plenty of examples of things done well in many livestock industries including live export and this was what people needed to aspire to and replicate.
I looked at your live export industry last time I was here and saw some very good practices in place.
"Someone said well maybe they just put a show on for you," Dr Grandin said.
"I said well maybe they did but that just proves things can be done right and in any case cattle don't put on a show.
"You can tell if they have been mishandled by the way they behave."
Dr Grandin said training staff well and good management were essential in any livestock system.
"Stockmanship matters and you absolutely must not allow understaffing," she said.
"The financial sector often puts pressure on, but people who are overworked become too tired to care.
"It's about not letting bad become normal.
"Get better equipment and systems and supervise your people and you will get better outcomes."
Dr Grandin said a classic example of where she had proven good practice was possible and influenced change was in working with McDonalds in its chicken supply chain.
"We were seeing up to five per cent of chickens coming in from farms with broken wings," she said.
"This was purely from a lack of good catching and handling technique.
"We trained staff better and incentivised them to do it right by paying on good handling, not speed to catch and we got the number of broken wings down to under one per cent," Ms Grandin said.
"I am a believer in incentive schemes.
"In the live export industry, for instance, people (staff) should be paid on the number of stock unloaded from the ship, not the number loaded."
In addition to teaching good practice, Dr Grandin said it was imperative to continually measure welfare indicators in livestock enterprises, which included things such as lameness or open mouth breathing when at rest.
"This is a sign they are too hot, which is not acceptable," she said.
To detractors of free range animal grazing systems and those advocating lab produced non-meat proteins, Dr Grandin also had a few points to make.
"The world has enormous expanses of grasslands which are not suitable for cropping and which will need to be used as a food source," she said.
"We have to seriously consider how we are going to do this and how we can integrate animals and grazers into this.
"Animal production is what is required there and land grazed right will be improved by the process.
"In fact in the US some of our best cropland around Iowa and Illinois was actually created by grazing animals which was a light bulb moment for me to learn that a few years ago.
"With regard to lab based foods my question is how much energy is required to produce them?"
Having grown up in a non-agricultural household, Dr Grandin was introduced to animals at her aunt's ranch in her teens.
She found solace in them from the bullying she experienced in school, manifested through suffering from autism which was not formally diagnosed until adulthood.
In the category of visual thinker on the autism spectrum she sees life in pictures and says this is similar to animals which are sensory based and influenced by pictures, sounds and smells.
Seeing things through animals' eyes has formulated her yard and feedlot design expertise.
"In raceways, for instance, cattle will be spooked by shadows, a coat hanging on a rail, people or vehicle movement and noises like clanging gates, so design yards to avoid these things occurring," she said.
"Curved raceways help to prevent animals being spooked by things further up the race."
It's practical insights such as these that Dr Grandin will bring to the construction of Minderoo Group's Koojan feedlot, which is expected to be operational within 18 months.
"It has been a pleasure to visit Western Australia and see Harvey Beef's farmers at work," Dr Grandin said.
"It is clear that a passion for animal welfare drives the wok of this organisation from farmer to producer to customer."
