Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds about Animals and Food » (Reprint)

Gene Baur is the president and cofounder of the nation's leading farm animal protection organization, Farm Sanctuary, which advocates the fair treatment of farm animals, a return to the roots of agriculture, and the end of animals' suffering for our consumption. Since 1986 his organization has not only helped to enact groundbreaking laws and policies to help prevent sick and diseased animals from ending up on our menus but has also rescued sick, abandoned, and abused animals from farms, stockyards, and slaughterhouses across the country. Baur and his colleagues provide, on farms in New York and California, a safe home and a healthful life for animals who are in desperate need of rescue. Please visit Farm Sanctuary's website at www.farmsanctuary.org.

Leading animal rights activist Gene Baur examines the real cost of the meat on our plates -- for both humans and animals alike -- in this provocative and thorough examination of the modern farm industry.

Many people picture cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens as friendly creatures who live happily within the confines of a peaceful family farm, arriving as food for humans only at the end of their sun-drenched lives. That's what Gene Baur had been told -- but when he first visited a stockyard he realized that this rosy depiction couldn't be more inaccurate.

Amid the stench, noise, and filth, his attention was drawn in particular to one sheep who had been cast aside for dead. But as Baur walked by, the sheep raised her head and looked right at him. She was still alive, and the one thing Baur knew for sure that day was that he had to get her to safety. Hilda, as she was later named, was nursed back to health and soon became the first resident of Farm Sanctuary -- an organization dedicated to the rescue, care, and protection of farm animals.

The truth is that farm production does not depend on the family farmer with a small herd of animals but instead resembles a large, assembly-line factory. Animals raised for human consumption are confined for the entirety of their lives and often live without companionship, fresh air, or even adequate food and water.Viewed as production units rather than living beings with feelings, ten billion farm animals are exploited specifically for food in the United States every year.

In Farm Sanctuary, Baur provides a thoughtprovoking investigation of the ethical questions involved in the production of beef, poultry, pork, milk,and eggs --and what each of us can do to stop the mistreatment of farm animals and promote compassion. He details the triumphs and the disappointments of more than twenty years on the front lines of the animal protection movement. And he introduces sanctuary. us to some of the special creatures who live at Farm Sanctuary -- from Maya the cow to Marmalade the chicken -- all of whom escaped horrible circumstances to live happier, more peaceful lives. Farm Sanctuary shows how all of us have an opportunity and a responsibility to consume a kinder plate, making a better life for ourselves and animals as well. You will certainly never think of a hamburger or chicken breast the same way after reading this book.

Publishers Weekly

In 1986, after rescuing a live sheep from a pile of dead animals in a stockyard, the author founded Farm Sanctuary, an organization that rescues discarded living animals from stockyards, slaughterhouses and factory farms; provides shelters for them; and advocates for humane animal treatment. In this impassioned book, Baur paints an appealing picture of these shelters and the animals that live there far from the brutality of industrial farming, which he describes in detail. Some of this inhumane treatment is not news-chickens packed into tiny cages-but accounts of living animals discarded like garbage because they are ill or weak surprise. Baur's nonprofit promotes legal remedies to stop the inhumane conditions chronicled. He believes that the best way to demonstrate concern for industrially farmed animals is to adopt a vegan lifestyle, but doesn't proselytize. Rather, he makes a strong case that meat eaters have an ethical responsibility to ensure that the animals they eat have not been abused. His well-argued book includes helpful lists of resources and organizations that deal with factory farming, animal welfare rights, humane food production and the environment. 18 b&w photos. (Mar.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Introduction: Opening the Gate     xi
From the Ground Up
The Road to Lancaster     3
Saving Hilda     19
Mad Cows and Washington     39
Watkins Glen     55
California, Here We Come     71
Get Big or Get Out
What's Wrong with the Factory Farm Today     83
The Real Deal on Veal     99
How Now Milk Cow?     113
It's Not Wilbur's Farm Anymore     127
The Pecking Disorder     147
Unnatural Disasters     167
On Their Behalf-and Ours
In the Eyes of the Law     185
Beneath the Skin     209
Epilogue: Finding Sanctuary     229
Resources     233
References     251
Notes     253
Acknowledgments     271
Index     275