Gene Baur
Gene Baur grew up in Hollywood, California and worked in television, film and commercials, including some for McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants. Today, he campaigns to raise awareness about the negative consequences of industrialized factory farming and our cheap food system. He lives in rural New York state and is the co-founder and president of Farm Sanctuary, America's leading farm animal protection organization. Gene holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from California State University Northridge and a master’s degree in agricultural economics from Cornell University.
After volunteering and working with various environmental and human rights causes, Gene turned his attention to animal agriculture. He has conducted hundreds of visits to farms, stockyards, and slaughterhouses to document conditions, and his pictures and videotape, exposing factory farming cruelty, have been aired nationally and internationally, educating millions. He has testified in court and before local, state and federal legislative bodies, and has initiated groundbreaking legal enforcement and legislative action to raise awareness and prevent factory farming abuses. He played a significant role in passing the first U.S. laws to prohibit cruel farming systems – including the Florida ban on gestation crates, the Arizona ban on veal and gestation crates, and the California and Chicago bans on foie gras. His efforts have been covered by leading news organizations, including the New York Times, The Larry King Show, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, National Public Radio, ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN. His book, entitled Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds about Animals and Food, was published by Simon and Schuster in March, 2008 and has become a National best seller.
“As I learned about the consequences of my food choices and as I recognized that I didn't have to eat animals, and that eating animals caused the animals to suffer, it caused an enormous footprint on our planet, and it wasn't healthy, it made since to go vegan. And, it's one of the best decisions I've ever made, and I think most people who've decided to go vegan share a similar experience. It's very empowering. And, when I went vegan I actually started eating a wide variety of foods I had never tried before. Different ethnic foods. You also start combining things in different ways, you start becoming more creative in the kitchen. But I went vegan just because it seemed to make sense, and it was aligned with my own values, because I didn't want to support this system that was so abusive to animals, and wasting and squandering so many scarce resources on our planet. And it was also healthier, so it was in my interest to eat food that was plant-based instead of animal-based. Living a vegan lifestyle makes a lot of sense.”
“The sixteen hundred dairies in California’s Central Valley alone produce more waste than a city of twenty-one million people-that’s more than the populations of London, New York, and Chicago combined.”