The smell of the animals hit Gene Baur before he could even make out the faded letters spelling out “Lancaster Stockyards” on the front of the barn. It was 1986, and Baur was 24 years old. He made his way up the Pennsylvanian road toward the sound of moos, bleats, and squeals coming from the alleyways and pens where various animals were herded, sold, and sometimes left for dead.
This was the largest stockyard east of Chicago. It wasn’t until Baur made his way around to the back of the building that he could see the atrocities up close.
“There were dead sheep, there were dead cows, there were dead pigs. The maggots were so thick you could hear them buzzing off of this pile.”
Gene Baur
Like most stockyards, workers carelessly tossed the dead bodies of cows, pigs, and sheep into a pile where they kept them to be picked up by the renderer. This grim reality was part of the routine for the staff, and something Gene had spent years documenting during his time hitchhiking across the country investigating slaughterhouses and animal malpractice.
“Horror is sort of the norm. Bad has become normal in factory farming and in farms,” Baur said. “You can feel the stress and the discomfort. When you walk into these places the air is thick, it burns your eyes, it’s in your throat the ammonia sometimes is so thick. You have animals often who are injured and can’t move.”
As he started to document the heap, a slight movement from the pile caught his eye. Stunned that any animal could survive the weight and stench of the bodies, Baur made his way toward what appeared to be a lamb. After pulling her from beneath the bodies, Baur brought her to a veterinarian thinking that she would have to be euthanized.
That’s when the baby sheep started to perk up.
This sheep became the first rescue for what is now known as Farm Sanctuary, a non-profit organization dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating farm animals.
The sheep, named Hilda, lived with Farm Sanctuary for more than ten years, becoming a symbol of hope and resilience for the organization. She was the first of many animals that Baur began to rescue from stockyards and factory farms before rehabilitating them and providing them with lifelong care.
“Working here, I get to see these happy animals and form relationships with these animals. They’re like my family,” Farm Sanctuary manager, Brooke Marshall, said. “To see animals that can live out their lives happily is really emotionally heartwarming and very rewarding.”
What is Farm Sanctuary?
Today, Farm Sanctuary has grown to become both a sanctuary and advocacy organization, with locations in California and New York. The non-profit provides shelter, medical care, and lifelong support to over 1,000 farm animals, many of whom have been rescued from abusive situations. Most importantly, they work to raise awareness about the cruel practices of factory farming.
“All of the animals come out of a system of oppression. It’s a system where the animals are seen as commodities, not as living feeling creatures,” Baur said. “It’s also one that exploits workers, including children and people from institutions of incarceration. It’s destroying the earth.”
Hilda’s story is just one example of the countless animals who have been saved by Farm Sanctuary’s mission. Each animal has their own unique story, from the turkeys rescued from factory farms who now enjoy Thanksgiving meals at the sanctuary to the cows who have developed lifelong bonds with their caregivers. Through their work, Farm Sanctuary has given these animals a chance at a life free from suffering and exploitation.
Photo Credit: Cara Westra
“There’s simply not enough room for all these animals and exotic species that are being trafficked and harmed,” Captain of the Law Enforcement Division of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Patrick Foy, said. “We have very, very good working relationships with these wildlife rehab centers and the people that run them. They are an invaluable resource for us.”
Baur is a pioneer in the field of animal rights and advocacy, with a career spanning over three decades. Born in Los Angeles, California, he obtained a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Cal State Northridge before getting his master’s degree in agricultural economics from Cornell University.
“Through high school and college, I just started learning more about the harm human beings were causing to other animals on Earth and I didn’t want to be part of it,” Baur said. “So, I started getting involved with environmental groups, with social justice groups, and I learned more about factory farming.”
In the early eighties, Baur hitchhiked around the country, getting involved with activists by volunteering with organizations such as Greenpeace and Ralph Nader marches.
“Factory farming is this horrible industry that causes harm to so many humans, other animals, and the planet. I wanted to challenge it. I felt it was important to do investigations to see firsthand what was happening, but I didn’t want to just read a book or talk to somebody,” Baur said. “And that’s how the sanctuaries began through our investigations, seeing animals left for dead and rescuing them.”
Before the formation of Farm Sanctuary, Baur operated as an all-volunteer organization that he funded by selling vegan hot dogs out of his Volkswagen van at Grateful Dead concerts. He claims that Farm Sanctuary was “very grassroots and from the bottom up.”
While the meat industry still operates in many of the same ways it did in the 1980s, Farm Sanctuary’s main goal is not only to make a difference in the lives of individual animals but to help to raise awareness about the meat industry and ethical alternatives.
“Breaking up the machinery that allows so much oppression to happen every day is a big challenge, and we are a relatively small movement with much fewer resources than we’re up against,” Baur said. “And there are, in addition to just economics and infrastructure issues, belief systems and social structures that we’re dealing with.”
The non-profit Ethical Farming Fund defines ethical farming as the “practice of producing food in a way that protects the environment, public health, communities, and animal welfare.”
Animal advocacy groups like the Ethical Farming Fund have found that industrial animal farming is causing immense damage to our planet. However, raising livestock in a humane and sustainable manner offers a range of benefits for human health.
For example, the Ethical Farming Fund discovered that factory farming relies on high-maintenance crops like corn and soy, which occupy a significant portion of American farmland. This approach to farming then creates significant air, land, and water pollution through the disposal of animal waste.
“If we don’t make a change, we’re honestly killing ourselves as a race,” Laura Marks, head coach at the Vegan Superhero Academy, said. “We’re really just harming ourselves, we’re hurting our environment, the farm animals are outgrowing the water supply and aren’t eating right. It’s not fair to them. Why are we being the middlemen?”
In contrast, the non-profit also found that livestock raised ethically on pasture produces healthier meat, dairy, and eggs with lower fat, calories, and cholesterol, and higher levels of essential nutrients like omega-3s, vitamin A, and vitamin E. Additionally, animals raised on pasture are not treated with growth hormones or sub-therapeutic antibiotics, which are common in industrial livestock.
Pasture-based farms mimic nature and rely on perennial plants like grasses, which help to strengthen and nourish the soil. These ethical farms reduce the need for fossil fuels in transport, generate less waste, and are less invasive to wildlife habitats than cornfields and feedlots.
Despite these benefits, as of 2019, nearly 99% of farm animals are factory farmed.
The founder of the Auburn Meadow Farm, Jackie Cleary, who has been deemed an “ethical farmer” by the Ethical Farming Fund, has dedicated her life to preserving the integrity of how her food is produced. Through breeding and raising livestock with a rich genetic diversity rather than producing fast-growth or high-production meat, she has been able to raise pigs, cattle, chickens, and geese all on pasture.
“‘Grass-fed’ is now a recipe, a formula,” Cleary said. “Grass-fed beef truly from Pennsylvania should not taste the same as grass-fed beef from California. We have a different climate, different food mix, different native plants. But large companies have commodified meat, so the consumers think it’s always the same, but it’s not always the same. It’s the tricks that are the same.”
Since the 1970s, the animal agriculture industry in America has undergone consolidation, which has resulted in the loss of many small and medium-sized farms. According to the Animal Welfare Institute, four meat companies, Cargill, Tyson, JBS, and National Beef Packing, now control 55-85% of the pork, beef, and chicken markets in the United States.
Large factory farming companies have co-opted terms such as “grass-fed” and “organic” in their marketing, which has led to confusion and dilution of these words. This misuse of labeling undermines the trust of consumers and makes it more difficult for ethical and sustainable farmers to differentiate their products.
“Multinational conglomerates figured out how to exploit those words so they become distorted. Organic is not at all what it once was, sustainable we hardly even use anymore, natural never meant anything legal. We now have this big rollout for the word regenerative. Even if we suggest a new word, commodity marketers have already taken off with it.”
Jackie Cleary
According to a report by the Organic Trade Association, sales of organic food and non-food products in the United States have grown from $1 billion in 1990 to $63 billion in 2021. Similarly, the use of terms such as “grass-fed,” “free-range,” and “humanely raised” have increased significantly in the animal product industry.
A study done by the Institute of Physics found that less than 1% of beef cattle in the United States were raised exclusively on grass in spite of most beef products sold in supermarkets being labeled as “grass-fed.” This indicates that large factory farming companies are using these terms for marketing purposes rather than adhering to their intended meaning.
Jill Isenbarger, the United Nations Foundation Chief of Staff and previous CEO of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, found that the market for “grass-fed” cattle in America has grown 100% per year since 2012. Marketers place pictures of happy cows in green fields on their meat products, creating a correlation in consumers’ minds between words like “grass-fed” or “organic” and ethical farming.
“Words make it very difficult because the internet, and how we’re getting information, is changing so fast,” Cleary said. “We’re wearing out these words.”
Large factory farms are less likely to provide animals with adequate space, access to pasture, and are more likely to subject the animals to painful procedures. With no legal standards for how animal cages should be built, farmers are instead governed by a patchwork of state and local laws.
All 50 states have also enacted “right-to-farm” laws that protect these farmers from lawsuits.
Many states have created legislation criminalizing whistleblowing activities, such as recording or photographing the abysmal conditions that farm animals typically experience. These laws are shielding factory farms from scrutiny.
“There was something called the Animal Enterprise Protection Act that passed in the 1990s, and then it was changed to the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, labeling animal activists essentially as terrorists,” Baur said. “That’s one of the challenges when you’re going up against a machine that wants to maintain the status quo.”
The Animal Welfare Institute found that most farm animals are subjected to one or more painful physical alterations, including castration, dehorning, tail docking, branding, teeth clipping, and beak trimming. This mutation begins at a young age for the animals and pain medication is rarely used. In America, there is virtually no use of anesthetics or analgesics for procedures.
The Farm Bill, the key driver of food and agriculture policy in the United States, is set to expire and must be reauthorized in 2023. The Farm Bill is a comprehensive piece of legislation renewed every five years that governs an array of food and agricultural programs including commodity price supports, crop insurance, rural economic development, research, and conservation.
“We’re putting more energy into looking at systemic changes and the subsidy structures that incentivize and enable factory farming,” Baur said. “Billions of dollars are spent every year by the federal government and state governments that support factory farming and enable it. We want to start tilting some of those billions of dollars towards a more sustainable food system.”
In recent years, there has been a push to expand the food stamp program, which historically has taken up around 80% of the bill’s spending, to support more fresh, healthy, and locally produced foods. This would provide a boost to small farms and producers who engage in ethical and sustainable farming practices.
“I think if we can start being more rational and actually making choices that are aligned with our values and interests, we’ll see a difference and create systemic change. I think most people would rather not destroy the planet the way factory farming does. I think most people would rather eat food that is nourishing and doesn’t make us sick the way these animal products do.”
Gene Baur
Gene has played a major role in the passing of the first U.S. laws prohibiting inhumane animal confinement and plans on continuing his mission to make systemic food industry reforms.
“I think lack of education is a big issue, people just don’t know. We need to inform people, we need to have a voice, but people are afraid to speak up,” Vegan Superhero Academy coach, Laura Marks, said. “We have to do our own research.”
On the individual level, there are many steps consumers can take to move towards the active support of ethical farming. In this country, racial and socioeconomic disparities leave marginalized communities without access to ethical, healthy foods. Advocating for the development of legislation that could grant access to nutritional options could result in the growth of the ethical farming industry while also improving the health of the nation.
Additionally, taking extra time to assess the labels on supermarket products can help consumers identify what has been ethically farmed. By following FoodPrint’s Food Label Guide, individual buyers can support the farmers who are not factory farming.
The National Library of Medicine found in a study that small everyday actions in food activism multiply and trigger broader engagement and change within government politics. This ripple effect has been found to impact climate change and larger political issues, meaning that even small steps in ethical consumption can help change the world.
