About Us

Rescue

When Farm Sanctuary's investigative and advocacy campaigns uncover cruelty at factory farms, stockyards and slaughterhouses, our Emergency Rescue Team helps bring the animals to safety. In fact, Farm Sanctuary runs the largest rescue and refuge network for farm animals in North America. At our 175-acre shelter in upstate New York and 300-acre shelter in northern California, Farm Sanctuary provides lifelong care and rehabilitation to farm animals rescued from cruelty and neglect.

With more than a dozen housing barns at each facility, hundreds of acres of pasture, and round-the-clock attention, Farm Sanctuary shelters are internationally recognized for quality care, as well as for our rescue, rehabilitation and placement efforts. Our Farm Animal Adoption Network has placed needy animals in loving homes across the U.S., and we offer training programs and workshops to help people interested in starting shelters and caring for animals.

Farm Sanctuary has been there to help with some of the largest farm animal rescue cases ever conducted in the U.S. In 2000, we helped save more than 1,500 hens trapped in crushed and twisted metal cages, after tornados laid waste to battery-cage warehouses at the Buckeye Egg Farm in Ohio.

In the winter of 2002, SPCA investigators alerted us to a massive cruelty case in Cattaraugus County, New York, where animals were left to starve in bitter cold temperatures. More than 100 surviving pigs, some frozen to the ground, were brought to our shelter hospital, where they received 24-hour emergency care and were later adopted into loving homes across the U.S.

In 2004, Farm Sanctuary responded to a cruelty case where 26 cattle, including several pregnant cows, were found starving to death inside a filthy, dilapidated barn and brought the mothers and babies to safety.

After Hurricane Katrina devastated the southeast in 2005, colossal warehouse-like poultry farms lay in ruins, many bulldozed into vast, live graves. Farm Sanctuary and other dedicated groups rescued as many birds as possible, and hundreds of dehydrated and starving chickens were trucked to our New York shelter, where they received vital care.

In 2006, Farm Sanctuary found homes for cattle who were tethered and confined in a barn that was overflowing with six feet-high piles of manure. The cattle could move only a few inches, and some were in such bad shape that they could barely walk.

In 2007, Farm Sanctuary rescued more than 200 animals from live markets and slaughterhouses in New York City alone.

Throughout the last 20 years, Farm Sanctuary has played a significant role in hundreds of rescues, providing rehabilitation and permanent sanctuary to abused farm animals from cruelty cases across the U.S. More than 7,000 animals have called Farm Sanctuary home, and we have found safe and loving placement for thousands more.