Gene Baur with a friend: ‘Farm sanctuaries can have a very positive influence because they help people to see farm animals as living, feeling creatures who are not that different than cats and dogs–who have feelings, who have memories, who have relationships, and who want to enjoy their lives just like human beings or cats or dogs or any other animal. And if we can live well without causing harm to these other animals, why wouldn’t we?’ (Photo: Lee Iovino)
By Duncan Strauss
When Gene Baur was a high school kid, he started volunteering at human rights organizations, and at a children’s hospital with terminally ill patients, while also spending time learning about environmental issues. Even as hotshot high schoolers go, these stand as the actions of a uniquely precocious adolescent. Why? Where did this come from?
“Well, I think that for me as a kid, like most kids, they’re curious, they’re interested in the world around them,” Baur, co-founder and president of Farm Sanctuary, said in a July Talking Animals interview. “I was born in 1962, so the Vietnam War was on television. The Cold War was all around us. And I grew up in the Hollywood Hills and there were wild animals. There were coyotes and skunks and raccoons and deer, and there were beautiful oak trees.
“One of the first memories I have is of a deer who got caught in a neighbor’s fence and had to be killed. And it just felt really bad. And then I remember, also, this beautiful oak tree that was cut down so a house could be made bigger, and that also just viscerally bothered me. And, so, I just thought about the harm humans were causing to other animals and to nature and to ourselves through wars and things, and I felt I didn’t want to be part of that. I didn’t want to be a cog in a wheel of a system causing so much harm.
“And factory farming is something that not very many people were thinking about in the 1980s. And so I felt that was an area that was really important. And when Farm Sanctuary started back in 1986, our thinking was we could just go in, document what is happening, educate people, and consumers would want to support something different. It would all go vegan.”
Looking back, he realizes this outlook was a bit wide-eyed. “It was pretty simple thinking,” he said. “And we didn’t have a long-term plan either. It was just each day we did what we felt made sense. And that continues today, to some extent, with more business planning and all that. But it was really just following this instinct of trying to do something positive in the world, and wanting not to be part of a system that was so harmful. That’s how it started for me.”
By which he means, in 1986, a few years after the precocious high-school undertakings, a 24-year-old Baur helped launch Farm Sanctuary. Long considered the nation’s leading farm animal protection organization, Farm Sanctuary was the first farmed animal sanctuary in the U.S.–the granddaddy of hundreds of farmed animal sanctuaries that have since popped up, and certainly an exemplar of such facilities.
This positions Baur as a pivotal pioneer-not just for siring the multitude of these operations, but also in the directly related work of rescuing farmed animals, raising awareness of the horrors of factory farming, and advocating for the benefits of plant-based eating.
‘The farm sanctuary movement reflects how people have increasingly learned about the abuses of factory farming, about how cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and other animals experience horrible lives on these industrial operations. And more and more people want to do something to make a difference.’ (Photo: Farm Sanctuary)
Baur has spoken eloquently on these and other issues for decades in media interviews, lectures, and panel discussions at conferences, and in podcasts and other settings.
He’s also articulated a wealth of overlapping information as an author, with his books including Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals And Food, and Living The Farm Sanctuary Life: The Ultimate Guide To Eating Mindfully, Living Longer and Feeling Better Every Day.
Through these various platforms, in the nearly 40 years since starting Farm Sanctuary (the chief location is in Watkins Glen, NY, with a second location in Acton, CA), Baur has become an enormously influential figure and, perhaps fittingly (given his line of work), tends to refer to human beings as “social animals.”
The phrase surfaces even when addressing this notion of Baur and Farm Sanctuary spawning countless comparable facilities across this country, as well as in other countries. Apparently, it’s not at all far-fetched to suggest these operations may feel like the offspring of Farm Sanctuary.
“Yeah, they do in many ways,” he said, “and it goes back a little bit to what I was saying earlier about how human beings are social animals. We see other people doing something and we’re inspired to do the same thing. I think the farm sanctuary movement reflects that, how people have increasingly learned about the abuses of factory farming, about how cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and other animals experience horrible lives on these industrial operations. And more and more people want to do something to make a difference.
“In 1986 there were no farm sanctuaries, and we were founded that year. Today there are thousands around the world. I think some people saw us and then started their own farm sanctuary. Some people saw other farm sanctuaries and started their own farm sanctuary, but this really speaks to how we are social animals, and we rub off on those around us. We influence those around us.
“Farm sanctuaries can have a very positive influence because they help people to see farm animals as living, feeling creatures who are not that different than cats and dogs–who have feelings, who have memories, who have relationships, and who want to enjoy their lives just like human beings or cats or dogs or any other animal. And if we can live well without causing harm to these other animals, why wouldn’t we? And I think more people are starting to ask themselves that question. And, also, people want to make a difference. And that’s part of why the farm sanctuary movement has grown so much.”
Some people, seeing this kind of tangible and colossal outgrowth of their twentysomething efforts-and now in their early 60s-would be slowing way down, if not resting on those laurels. Or just resting. Not Gene Baur. Even with that enormous battalion of farm sanctuaries, Baur recognizes that he and a slew of like-minded folks occupy the wrong end of a stupendous David/Goliath battle.
“One of the key issues that you always rub up against when you are an animal sanctuary,” Baur said, “is that ultimately–especially when it comes to farm animals–we can’t rescue ourselves out of this factory farming problem. There are literally 10 billion farm animals raised and slaughtered every year in the United States. And so even if we rescued a million animals a year–which is not practical or possible for us–it would be a drop in the bucket.
“What we ultimately need to do is to go upstream and to prevent the need to rescue billions of animals every year. And again, for sanctuaries, it’s tough because every single individual who’s exploited in the system deserves to be rescued. So ethically, we in a sense have an obligation to do it, but it’s impossible. So you do the best you can, you provide as many homes as you can, but I think it’s also very important to put energy into educating people and to advocating for reform in the food system.”
Farm Sanctuary continues to put tremendous energy into those areas-indeed, two of the major sections on the Farm Sanctuary website are Educate and Advocate. Hardly surprising, given the organization’s longtime objectives.
But what might be less expected is that Farm Sanctuary operates a research arm, which is conducting investigations into some fascinating realms, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in rescued farm animals.
“PTSD is something that people experience–veterans of war, or people who’ve been through traumatic experiences have these lasting lingering impacts of those experiences,” he said. “We believe that animals who’ve been abused in the factory farming industry also have these lingering effects of that trauma. We have a really innovative research team that is doing some great work to try to understand these other animals and to be able to encourage and help people empathize with them.”
‘We can’t rescue ourselves out of this factory farming problem. There are literally 10 billion farm animals raised and slaughtered every year in the United States. And so even if we rescued a million animals a year–which is not practical or possible for us–it would be a drop in the bucket. What we ultimately need to do is to go upstream and to prevent the need to rescue billions of animals every year.’ (Photo: Farm Sanctuary)
Yes, in the Farm Sanctuary universe, nearly everything ends up circling back to factory farming, a nefarious and formidable foe. But, as you might imagine by now, Gene Baur doesn’t, for one second, consider waving any kind of white flag. That same positive attitude and zeal for compassionate action–for doing the right thing to help people in need-he displayed as an old-soul high school student is every bit as present 40 years later. And then some.
“The way I stay active and engaged in this process is I try to focus on the positive things,” he said. “I try to focus on what we’re able to achieve. I also want to be realistic and don’t want to be too pollyannaish about victories and success, but I really do believe that awareness is increasing. I see enormous interest, including investments in alternatives to factory farming foods, but we’re up against the big machines that have been entrenched for decades. But I do hold onto the small victories and I also believe that small victories rub off and grow into bigger victories and small changes over time can become big changes. So I have hope, I have optimism, and that’s what keeps me going in this work.”
You can hear the Gene Baur interview on this edition of Talking Animals: https://talkinganimals.net/2023/07/gene-baur-co-founder-and-president-of-farm-sanctuary/
About the Author: Combining his passions for animals, radio, journalism, music and comedy, Duncan Strauss launched Talking Animals at KUCI in California in 2003. Since late 2005 the show has aired on Tampa’s WMNF. Producer-host Strauss lives in Jupiter Farms, FL, with his family, including four cats, two horses and one dog. He spends each day talking to those animals, and maintains they talk right back to him, a claim as yet unverified by credible sources.
