Farm Sanctuary
The largest farm-animal rescue and advocacy organization in the United States, founded in 1986 to change how society views and treats farm animals.
Farm Sanctuary is a United States–based nonprofit founded in 1986 by Gene Baur and Lorri Houston (then Lorri Bauston) after a now-iconic rescue of a sheep named Hilda from a stockyard “dead pile.” It was the first organization in the country dedicated explicitly to farm-animal rescue and advocacy.
What they do
- Sanctuary care. Farm Sanctuary operates shelters in New York and California that provide lifetime care to rescued cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys, sheep, goats, and other farmed species.
- Advocacy. The organization has run campaigns against the worst practices of industrial animal agriculture — gestation crates, veal crates, battery cages, downed-animal handling — many of which have since been banned in various U.S. states.
- Education. Through its “Someone, Not Something” project and public programs, Farm Sanctuary invites visitors to meet individual rescued animals, which for many becomes the moment of cognitive dissonance that reshapes their relationship to food.
Why it matters
Farm Sanctuary helped popularize the idea — now widespread across the movement — that farm animals are individuals with names, preferences, and inner lives. Most modern sanctuaries follow a model it pioneered.
Founder Gene Baur has since become one of the most recognized advocates for veganism in American public life.