ENKINDLER

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I fell in love with Lester the Cow at Farm Sanctuary®. He, along with his buddies Hank and Norman were more than happy to show us how to lounge about like retirees in the midst of their sunset years. He decided to lie down when I started scratching his neck; he wanted his belly rubbed. Lester knows how to chill. Not bad for a Cow purchased for only a dollar.
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Nine miles West of I-5 in Orland, California, there are 300 acres of farmland that serve as a refuge for abused, neglected, and orphaned farm animals. It is a little piece of heaven on earth. Backing up to Black Butte Lake—sitting on the eastern foothills of the coastal mountain range is where the one of eldest residents live on the farm. She’s a female burro named “Bonnie”, who never leaves the side of her boyfriend “Waylon”. The youngest, “Colvin”, is a bottle fed lamb just birthed by a wayward mother only a week ago.

Farm Sanctuary® (FS) is the tangible living dream of Gene Baur. There is also a sister sanctuary site in Watkins Glen, New York where he started the nation’s leading farm animal protection agency in 1986.

Gene is currently out on the road in support of his book, New York Times® Best Seller, “Farm Sanctuary: Changing hearts and minds about animals and food”.

I caught up with him while in Albany, NY where he was preparing a speech for a college audience. He has been impassioned to fight animal cruelty since 1985; the same year he became a vegan. He began by helping surrendered, downed, and ailing farm animals.

Like any new endeavor with a shoestring budget, Gene started his business of animal cruelty awareness and rescue while living out of a school bus. In 1986, he funded his venture by selling veggie hotdogs at Grateful Dead concerts. He simply did whatever it took to accomplish his goal of saving neglected and abused farm animals. From 1986-89, he pounded the pavement from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to NY where he gained a reputation in the Finger Lakes region as a tough negotiator to farmers and an ally to farm animals.

When asked how he got started Gene says, “I would help animals left for dead or found in the dead pile at the stockyards and then find them homes.”

In his book, he tells the story of Hilda the sheep, the first farm animal that was rescued by Farm Sanctuary. It is a must read. Hilda has long since passed, but the epilogue on her headstone is testament to Gene’s success. It reads, “Hilda, rescued from a stockyard, August 3, 1986, died of old age, September 25, 1997–forever changing hearts and minds.”

He always knew he wanted to make a difference in the world, so he began by volunteering as a teen at a local Children’s Hospital. After earning his Degree in Sociology, he decided that he would like to help people. As time went on, he also began to gain interest in environmental issues. Once he saw the connection between human suffering, an ailing ecology, and the abuses of animals at the factory farms, he knew that he had to do something! All these things are connected. The environment, how we eat as a culture, and how we feel has a lot to do with our physical and mental health. We, as a culture have become separate from the source of our food.

“I always found inspiration in the transformational power of helping an animal and watching its progress,” Gene would remark. He saw the common thread between the three things he loved - animals, humans, and the planet we all share.

Some of these animals are here because of the result of greed gone wild. Factory farms that keep these animals confined in unhealthy ways, subject them to abusive methods of behavior modification, and exploit them for maximum profit. The birds’ beaks are cropped along with their front toes to reduce natural bird aggressiveness when confined. Lots of other options subsist that would eradicate the debeaking method. They could give them ample space, divide them into smaller groups, or simply alter the lighting. It may necessitate the need for humans to eat less poultry, or be willing to compensate for the extra cost of maintaining the birds in a healthier environment.

Short term effectiveness and prosperity, rather than enduring sustainability drives the factory farming mold. I’m not speaking of good old family farmer–I’m talking about large government subsidized industries that seek profit rather than concerning themselves with public health or cruelty-free animal management.

Back at the “Farm Sanctuary Hospital”, we take a moment to visit with Wendy–a recovering new mother of two. She was a pregnant sheep abandoned on the side of a road in California, a few weeks earlier. According to Education Coordinator Carolyn Mullin, “She was terrified, weak, and unable to stand on her own. She turned out to be carrying two offspring. One of the lambs was born with underdeveloped lungs, so she was rushed to the University at Davis Veterinary Hospital to receive oxygen and antibiotics.” The other lamb, just one week old, is joyfully frolicking like Tigger around with a toy ball in the play pen just feet away from a still worried mom.

Carolyn pauses a minute, as she tells me about the Matriarch of the cattle herd named, “Dawn”. When Dawn’s best friend- a three-legged cow named “Sadie” was put to rest, Dawn was discovered mourning her by rolling over her grave site. Critics may say this is anthropomorphic behavior. It should at least make you question the level of awareness in these living, breathing, feeling beings.

Many of the animals may have been BB gun targets, found in boxes on the side of the road, orphaned, or victimized by neighboring dogs. Most of them were friendly, even after they realized we didn’t have food. Kim Basinger and James Cromwell (Babe’s Farmer Hoggett) are a few of the stars of note, who have sponsored animals at farm sanctuary. James is one who often participates in the Adopt-a-Turkey program sponsored by Farm Sanctuary. One year, when a USA Today reporter asked James for his thoughts about turkey’s reported low IQs, he responded: “Turkeys have probably been around as long as we have. The only difference is they don’t kill each other and they don’t pollute the earth. They can’t be that dumb.” (Excerpt from p.164 of his book)

Gene says, “All he really wants is for people to be consistent with their own values and interest, presenting options and ideas that are cruelty-free. Citizens need to promote policies that are consistent with those values and interests. Access to healthy, affordable food should be a right, not a privilege.”

Organic farmers who grow and produce healthy, cruelty-free products should be supported and those who abuse animals, destroy the environment, and endanger public health should be put out of business. Micro economies have sustained humankind for centuries. Those who sell food products that contribute to heart disease, cancer, obesity and other serious health risks should be denied government subsidies. They should at least be required to carry warning labels about the techniques used to produce the end result.

Americans are becoming more obese. We rely on fast food diets which consist of large amounts of animal bi-products. Gene says, “As consumers, we can improve our own health and send an important market signal to agribusiness every time we eat by eschewing meat, milk and eggs, and by choosing organic produce instead!”

WE can change our laws to include compassion and decency. We can choose to seek organic farmers in our area. We can choose to research where the food we consume was derived. There needs to be a balance between the food we eat and how it is produced. Truly, the best food may be in your own back yard. If we chose to support farming within one hundred miles of where each of us lives, it could rock the industry. What if we were to invest part of our food budget towards organic food from farms within 50 miles of where we live?

In a speech before congress last month, President Barack Obama called out the factory farming industry saying, “We will end subsidies to large agribusiness that don’t need them.”

Industrial agriculture and others who profit from the detrimental status quo are responding.

The Wall Street Journal reported, “Industries including health care, agribusiness, and mining that stand to lose under Obama’s policy agenda are ramping up lobbying campaigns to modify his plans.”

Our animal centered food structure has become wasteful and sick, along with the state of our nation’s health. We are a fast-food culture with a growing obesity problem. With heart disease on the rise, it may seem appropriate for us to take a second look at Tofu-turkey or Tofurky.

Most people never question where the food comes from that they are eating at the Thanksgiving Banquet. As I stood there among a tightly huddled rafter of nervous “lady turkeys”, I could not help to notice the beaks shorn along with front toe nail cropped from their former confinement.

Chickens, once kept in tight cages not allowed to touch the earth since birth. “Decades ago, hens laid between 30 and 60 eggs per year. After years of selective breeding, layer hens now lay between 250 and 300 eggs per year, leading to ailments such as fatty liver syndrome, cage-layer fatigue (osteoporosis), and egg binding,” Carolyn informs me.

It is a miracle that so many chickens managed to cross the roads to find solace in the freedom at FS. Over 7000 have been able to roam openly in their hen houses. Many of them are recovering from the obscene egg-laying demands of their former keepers. We, as a society must cross a road of our own. Do we continue to look the other direction and accept the mystery meat of our fast food culture? Or, do we embrace knowledge, exercise compassion, practice decency, and seek to reduce public health risk?

As Gene points out in his blog, “In his classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck laments the hardships of family farmers pushed off the land by greedy interests, including “land and cattle” companies. And he writes about the injustice and arrogance of agribusiness wielding excessive influence and seeking profit above all else, regardless of the harm caused to others: “There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight row trees, the sturdy trunks and the ripe fruit. And the children dying…”Steinbeck continues,“…and in the eyes of the people there is a failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people, the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

Gene would remark, “The decreasing amount of smaller farms and destruction of rural communities at the hands of agribusiness make Steinbeck’s warning as prescient as it is relevant.”

This is history repeating itself. Drought combined with overuse of the land during the 1930’s, created the ecological nightmare known as Dustbowl Era. Exhaustive animal agriculture depletes precious natural assets. Instead of being eaten by people, the preponderance of grain harvested in the U.S. is fed to farm animals. This uneconomical and incompetent practice has strained agribusiness to abuse vast stretches of land. Forests, wetlands, ecosystems and wildlife habitats have been decimated and twisted into crop and grazing land. Limited fossil fuels, groundwater, and topsoil resources which took centuries to develop are now disappearing. We are all affected by the loss.

Family farms have been the heart of agrarian way of life for thousands of years, providing the possibility to connect with the land and to live in tune with weather trends. Time-honored practices by wise farmers won’t produce more than the carrying capability of the land. They appreciate the condition of the soil and its capacity to sustain an assortment of crops from season to season. There is a connection between what we eat and how to sustain a healthy economy. It is important to invest in local farming. To create sustainable growth at the local level, will serve as a path to avoiding the impending agricultural business collapse.

How the food is produced is more important for sustaining growth than what is produced. The ancient cultures knew that they should not over-use the land because it would cause nature to change course. In the Torah, the ancient wisdom of Judaism, there was always a seventh year of agricultural rest for the land to regain balance. They called it a Sabbatical Year. They planned for it and mandated it as a culture. Many faiths still meet weekly on Saturday or Sunday to rest, fast, and worship as they did long ago to remember the importance of keeping that balance. The Native Americans, like the Sioux, learned to hunt only the Bison they needed.

According to FS, a range of studies have shown the benefits of traditional farm economies and the negative consequences of factory farming. Among the first to study this problem as it emerged in the 1940s, was social scientist Walter Goldschmidt who found that Communities with absentee-owned industrial farms are less developed economically and socially than similar communities composed mainly of family farms. Goldschmidt’s findings have since been replicated by others.

These are ideas that are beginning to take traction. Possibly with a new administration and new leadership at the head of the FDA, there is hope for a more balance approach.

While I am not opposed to consuming animals for food, I am adamantly opposed to the abuse, neglect, and cruelty that so many animals are subjected to by humans. While it is lawful to eat meat and I do so with good judgment, how and where the food comes from is also very important! One benefit we have in the U.S. and Canada, is that choice still remains ours.

Keep up the good work Gene. You are an inspiration to us all!

Best, James Curt Byrum

To find out more about Gene’s work or to donate to Farm Sanctuary. http://www.farmsanctuary.org

Farm Sanctuary Facts:

2008: Landmark victory in California when Prop 2 passes (with 63% of the vote). Ballot measure bans three of the cruelest factory farming confinement systems - battery cages, veal crates and gestation.
2008: Precedent-setting legal victory achieved when N.J. Supreme Court unanimously rules that factory farming practices cannot be considered “humane” simply because they are widely used.
2007: After a two year Farm Sanctuary campaign, Wolfgang Puck announces that he is removing foie gras and crated veal from his menus, as well as implementing a 9 point plan addressing animal welfare concerns, including the addition of more vegetarian options throughout his businesses. crates — in the state by 2015. Farm Sanctuary is a co-leader of this campaign.
2006: Arizona Voters overwhelming vote Yes on Proposition 204 to ban the use of gestation crates for breeding pigs and veal crates for calves in the state. Farm Sanctuary is a leading backer of this campaign.
2005: After Hurricane Katrina devastated the Southeast, colossal warehouse-like poultry farms lay in ruins. Farm Sanctuary and other dedicated groups rescue as many birds as possible, and hundreds of dehydrated and starving chickens are brought to the New York Shelter, where they receive vital care. During its first two decades, Farm Sanctuary has rescued and provided lifelong care for more than 7,000 farm animals in need.
2004: Farm Sanctuary is invited to speak about animal rights at the USDA. This is the first time an animal rights organization is asked to speak publicly at the USDA.
2002: Farm Sanctuary is a key sponsor of the first-ever ballot initiative to ban a cruel factory-farming practice in the U.S. This measure bans gestation crates in Florida.

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