You also do adoptions?
We’re always looking for loving homes. If anybody out there wants to adopt farm animals, please call us. We’ll work with you to make sure you have a proper shelter set-up, and housing and feed and how to care of these animals. In fact, just next week we have an adoption going on. With nine billion produced in the United States, needless to say, you can never do enough. You rescue the ones that you can, but you cannot rescue every single animal. So it’s vitally important that these animals become animal ambassadors. We have a very active education program. We have an event every month, sometimes two or three a month. We have humane education tours, kids coming up constantly from the L.A. unified school district and other districts, and tours every Sunday. I mean, it’s very important that the animals be given their job once they’re at a sanctuary. It’s their only job. Other than that, they get to sleep and eat all the time. But their job is really to be ambassadors, to teach people, and we saw this most recently on a show called 30 Days, a national reality show where they sent out a hunter, George, from North Carolina, to live with a vegan family, and he spent a lot of time at Animal Acres. You know, I wasn’t able to convince him. We didn’t hit it off. Who did convince him was little Sugar, a little veal calf that he actually helped go out on the rescue with, and he bonded with, and I matched up George and Sugar. George took care of Sugar and really bonded with this little guy. We also showed George the cruelty of veal calf farms and the dairy industry, and that had an impact, too. In fact, it’s available on iTunes, and you can download it for two bucks. It’s a great educational tool. But yeah, we see how the animals reach people and they get into people’s hearts and they get into people’s souls, and it has a profound impact on people.
Have you heard from George since then?
No, we haven’t. I have to send him a picture of Sugar. I think I’ll be doing that when we get back. Now I don’t know if he went vegan or vegetarian, but I know his eyes really opened. He did say publicly on television that he’s against factory farming, intensive confinement operations, so that’s a good start. Every step is important.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
One last thing, please, please, please, if you love animals, we’re going full circle here, please consider not eating them.
