Going all in

“I had to convince my family to move, but this company, when I went down and talked to them, was so excited about the possibility of me coming to help them.”

He told them, “If you’re not serious about getting this right, I’m not going to bother,” says McAlister, who ultimately accepted the position and began working at Triumph about 16 months after the new plant had started up operations. “It’s a commitment that they made and they’ve stuck to it.”

“I came in and started writing programs.” He said there was a 10-year to 12-year period that the approach to animal welfare underwent a much-needed revolution. “That was when (the industry) decided ‘we’re going to get this right.’” The push was driven by consumers, regulators and by the industry’s desire to realize more profits by doing what everyone agreed was right.

McAlister says his training has been experienced based and his tenure in the industry began right out of high school, without any formal training or college in his background. “I’m just your average Joe,” he jokes.

When he started at Triumph, the plant was electronically stunning hogs, a technology that would later be changed to a CO2 system. In his first year with the company, though, McAlister says he and his team developed between 15 and 20 written animal welfare programs. Soon thereafter, he says, “Everything turned around; we turned the corner.” He says this was the tenor and focus of the industry, at Triumph and other plants where other species were slaughtered. He was an integral part of retro-fitting the plant for CO2 stunning, which was a significant investment and another learning curve that ultimately paid significant dividends.

Time for a change

The animal welfare evolution was more like a revolution in the 90s.

“We were ready for it; it was the time. It was the thing that was happening everywhere. This wasn’t an original idea from Jason McAlister, I was just lucky enough to be involved in it at just the right time.

“I’m not special,” he says, adding: “I don’t do anything better or different than anyone else other than be engaged. That’s the one thing I pride myself on is being willing to learn and then turn that around and teach somebody.

“If you would have told me in 1989 when I was living in California that 10 years later I’d be learning about pigs and teaching it to other people, I would have laughed at you. It’s not something I sat down and planned to do.”

As McAlister became a student of livestock handling, which included attending industry events like the Animal Care and Handling Conference and PAACO (Professional Animal Auditor Certification Organization) training courses, he realized there were plenty of opportunities to learn more. “There were these golden opportunities to learn everywhere you would go. I was like a sponge trying to get to everything I could and bring what I learned back home. I was lucky enough to have the support of Triumph at the time,” which included footing the bill for McAlister to attend multiple training and educational conferences and workshops each year.

When he began coming to NAMI’s annual Animal Care and Handling Conference in the early days of his career, McAlister remembers well the people who inspired him and those who set the stage in the ‘90s for the vast improvement in animal handling practice throughout the industry today. He mentions early adopters and followers of Temple Grandin, including Kellye Pfalzgraf, DVM, who led Tyson Foods’ animal welfare programs in those formative years, and Mike Siemens, who formerly held a similar role at Cargill. McAlister has served on the NAMI Animal Welfare Advisory Committee for three years and is proud to be a part of this important group, of which Grandin is still a very active member. This past year he also began serving on the National Pork Board’s Animal Welfare Committee.

Looking ahead, McAlister says there is plenty of positive momentum.

“The passion that I feel,” he says, “I can also see in a lot more people,” including the next generation of industry professionals that are coming out of college now and starting their careers with a fresh perspective and plenty of optimism. Many of those in the industry, including McAlister, have been inspired by Grandin and many have studied under her at Colorado State Univ. as animal science graduate students or Ph.D. students.

“If you’re in the Temple camp, you’re in it,” he says, and her commitment to the industry is 24-7, which inspires McAlister and legions of her followers. “Temple and I are kind of kindred spirits,” when it comes to animal welfare, he says, “but I would never compare myself to her because there will never be anyone like her again.”

This type of sharing of ideas and networking within the industry, even among competing companies, was the idea behind the formation of a group of livestock handling professionals getting together to form “The Humane Way,” a consortium led by McAlister. As a believer in sharing ideas and resources to develop solutions “The Humane Way” is a group made up of industry people from different companies that are involved in animal handling. The group networks together and exchanges ideas through emails, engaging in the organization’s Facebook page and through group discussions, to troubleshoot animal welfare issues. “Animal welfare should never be a competitive issue,” he says. “We all need to be resources to each other.”