It is immoral, inhumane and unsustainable to treat animals as "commodities" on factory farms, Baur said. Farm Sanctuary aims to raise public awareness regarding such animal mistreatment across the country.
"One of the ways we raise awareness is rescuing animals from bad places and telling their stories," he said. "They're our friends, not our food [at Farm Sanctuary], they get to be who they are and get to enjoy life."
Besides issues of animal cruelty, problems of industrialized factory farming in the U.S. range from negative health effects of eating large amounts of protein to inflated external farming costs, according to Baur, who has been a vegan since 1985.
Although factory-farmed meat is often cheap at the supermarket, the sticker price does not reflect the full cost of such farming techniques, Baur said. He referenced a 2008 New York Times article by Mark Bittman, "Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler," in which Bittman compared the costs of producing a vegetarian meal and a meat-based meal. The meat-based meal's production required 16 times more fossil fuels, Baur said.
A largely meat-based diet leads to increased health care costs, environmental degradation and pollution, decreased property values in areas surrounding farms and a dependency on increasingly expensive fossil fuels, Baur said.
"The idea that factory farms feed a lot of people is tied to the idea that factory-farmed foods are cheap and affordable," he said. "But they're not cheap. The main issue is the externalities."
Baur displayed graphs illustrating that in 1997 the United States had higher health care costs per capita than Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Korea and the United Kingdom. The percent of gross domestic product spent on health care has steadily increased over the past several decades as meat consumption has also increased, he said.
"As spending on food goes down, spending on health goes up," Baur said. "If we spend more to get good food, our health improves so it becomes a wash."
In regard to labor and environmental laws, agricultural producers are often exempt from the governmental oversight that other industries face, according to Baur. Minimum wage, for example, is lower in agriculture than in other industries and anti-cruelty laws may not always apply to agricultural practices. Farm animals are also excluded from the Animal Welfare Act, Baur said.
Baur emphasized the "atrocious" quality of life that factory-farmed animals endure across the country.
In dairy farms, female cows are repeatedly impregnated and then immediately separated from their young once they are born, according to Baur. Female calves become dairy cows, while male calves are killed to produce veal. Dairy cows are milked several times a day and forced to produce 10 times as much milk as they would naturally. Such practices result in a dairy cow lifespan of approximately three years, compared to the 18-year lifespan of an average cow, Baur said.
Chickens, which account for over 9 billion of the 10 billion factory-farmed animals killed in the United States each year, are kept in such cramped conditions that they cannot move their wings, Baur explained. Birds that are "spent" the term used to describe hens that are no longer able to lay eggs are killed. Baur described a Southern California egg factory that disposed of 30,000 spent hens by running them through a wood chipper. Although the owner of the factory was sued for animal cruelty, he was found not guilty due to the industry's "common practice" protection, Baur said.
Although such behavior has become acceptable in the agricultural industry, it is "inconsistent with our better selves," Baur said.
"Being mean to animals causes us to lose the best of our humanity," he said.
Baur urged the audience members to effect change by altering their own eating habits. Approximately 60 students and community members attended the talk.
"The place where big change can happen is for each individual to start making choices that are more aligned with our own values and our own interests," he said. "We need to eat food that makes us feel good and healthy instead of food that gives us heart disease and cancer and makes us sick."
The lecture, "Changing Hearts and Minds about Animals and Food," was part of Farm Sanctuary's 25th anniversary speaking tour. The event took place in Rockefeller Hall and was sponsored by the Dartmouth Animal Welfare Group and Dartmouth Graduate Vegetarians and Vegans.
