[Music] [Music] [Music] I'm Manisha DEA and I teach animal law at the University of Victoria in Canada in this documentary series you'll discover the many ways that our Western legal systems fail to protect animals and also what you can do to make a difference you'll hear the views and experiences of Youth active in animal protection and of professionals who make animal advocacy their life work in this episode we'll learn about animal sanctuaries and what it's like to start an animal sanctuary i
ncluding the first wild whale Sanctuary but first what is an animal sanctuary an animal sanctuary is a facility where animals are brought to live and to be protected for the rest of their lives frequently what distinguishes a sanctuary from other institutions is the philosophy that the animals come first many sanctuaries are accredited through the global Federation of animal sanctuaries it all started when I visited Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen New York that was what really started my passion
um for advocating for non-human animals because I realized it wasn't just enough for me to be vegan and to abstain from eating animals but I I had to be part of the solution to animal agriculture and I really had to make a difference in my community I wouldn't sit down for other social justice issues and be silent so I decided I wasn't going to be silent for Animals any longer and it's truly the individual animals and their stories that inspire me every day and that's what keeps me going um I th
ink a lot of folks would agree like for example they have cats and dogs um and they treat them as a member of their family and how visited sanctuaries just sort of seeing how at ease um these animals can be should be they they shouldn't be treated as a means for profit which they are across every industry really but I think the biggest turning point for me was when my family got chickens when I was 9 years old and I realized how amazing they were and that they were just as special and intelligen
t and unique as the dogs and cats that I had um grown up with my entire life and a little less than a year after we got the chickens I found out about factory farming and particularly the egg industry I just couldn't believe that chickens just like the chickens that I loved so much at home were going through this unimaginable cruelty and so I went to my mom one day and I said hey can we start a chicken rescue and she was like maybe um and I was like oh my God she didn't say no um so I just hoppe
d into it and started um building a website I named my organization and my mom agreed that we could rescue 12 chickens from a local Egg Farm um and then we couldn't stop and um yeah that was kind of how I I initially got him involved in the world of of animal rights so when I uh I think I was uh I don't know 23 years old and I I went to India and I told my dad I want to visit a bandra pole which is an animal sanctuary in India and my dad took me to the sanctuary and I was so inspired by seeing s
o many animals living their best lives there were no uh chains around them there were no like leashes they were just all kind of coexisting together being fed by very loving caring attendance I donated like 10% of my salary to this pundra pole and I thought okay one day this is this is like this has to come to America this has to be in America people have to see this and when I learned about Farm Sanctuary as as a sanctuary similar to the one that I I mean less populated but similar to the one t
hat I visited in India I thought gosh this is I want to be part of this I wan to I W to be with those animals I want to help this organization yeah as I mentioned before um it kind of all started when um my family got chickens and the first rescue that we did uh We rescued 12 hens from a local Egg farm so this was a local factory farm so we got them home we got them to safety and we put them in um a coupe we had recently built for them and their Combs were pale very very pale because they've bee
n in these dark barns and they'd never seen sunlight before they never seen the sky and just knowing that all of those chickens were having their lives completely transformed that they were seeing the Sun for the first time feeling dirt for the first time because we rescued them was the most powerful experience that maybe I've ever had being able to see um just like the astonishment of on their faces uh and you know they they would their heads and look up at the sky um it was just just a really
magical experience honestly and my mom and I I think we both knew pretty immediately that um you know we we had to help more um and give more chickens more animals in general the opportunity to see the sky for the first time and um be safe and and free from um this industry yeah um my biggest Inspirations are two people Susie C and Jean Bower Jean Bower found his Farm Sanctuary I met Jean Bower I think on my 11th birthday I went to a book signing event and I got to meet him and I'm wearing a Far
m Sanctuary sweatshirt right now yeah but it's definitely my favorite organization and seeing how they come at animal rights from both an direct action aspect with the animals that they rescue and also with an advocacy program and working with um communities around the world to promote animal rights and plant-based diets it's just truly one of the most incredible organizations around I'm so inspired by the story of Jean Bower and how he was so moved by seeing um a pile of dead sheep and there wa
s one that was kind of moving at the top of the pile and he grabbed her he took her he healed her and he named her Hilda and she was the first Rescue of Farm Sanctuary and now it's this large organization that has a sanctuary in uh Upstate New York and just outside of Los Angeles and we have I think close to a thousand animals that have been rescued and uh so yeah so Farm Sanctuary is is an incredible place not just to visit but even for employment we have three pillars we have a a rescue divisi
on we have an education division and um and we have an advocacy division we talk about the federal subsidies like 20 billion dollars given to the meat and dairy Industries fueling foods that aren't respective of ancestral diets and so we work on food policy we work on uh supporting National Endeavors such as Cory Booker's Farm systems Reform Bill which is designed to end factory farming yeah we um applied for our 501c3 status and put together a board and um started getting volunteers from the lo
cal community and hiring staff and became a a real organization and now we've rescued over a thousand animals from factory farms slaughterhouses and other abusive situations like fighting and boarding situations and things like that we currently have I believe eight pigs um at the sanctuary uh we have two cows we've got goats sheep chickens obviously turkeys geese ducks all sorts of animals rescued uh from factory farms and from slaughter houses and you know they're all just such wonderful Uniqu
e Individuals and getting to know them has has been honestly a a real honor uh I think for for all of us at happy an animal sanctuary uh and to to see how their personalities come out after they've been rescued I think that to a large extent um this work of understanding our relationships can happen in the sanctuary World um the world of animal sanctuaries both sanctuaries for formerly farmed animals animals that might have been released from certain kinds of industrial production facilities tha
t might have escaped from those facil facilities and also animals that get confiscated um by uh law enforcement and animal control um because they were being treated badly they go to sanctuaries and I think a lot can be learned um from those um relationships that develop for those animals the same thing with the chimpanzee sanctuaries um and the other sanctuaries for wild animals and I think that this is an area that would be particularly exciting for thinking about cases to um imagine how the l
aw might be able to um facilitate um ongoing Sanctuary work and also to be honest um to play a certain role in setting a certain set of Standards or guidelines um for that um our steer Buddha when he was rescued he was just a weak old calf and he was Skin and Bones he had severe pneumonia uh he he was rescued from a factory dairy farm and we honestly for months weren't sure he was going to make it it took months for his fever to break uh but I even though he was so sick I remember the first time
that he touched the ground at Happy Hen Animal Sanctuary after spending his his week his one week of life in a in a ve crate on this factory farm uh he like jumped for joy and like danced around and he was so weak he fell on his face but he got right back up and danced around again he was just so happy even though he was so sick and had been through so much and today he's like 2,000 pounds probably he's a really big guy so he's just a total sweetheart um and he hadn't been rescued he would have
ended up at the Harris Ranch Feed lot which is a u massive feed lot um in central California um so I'm very grateful that um he didn't have to go through that and we were able to rescue him so young I met a mother cow and her babies had been stolen from her her entire life and she was just incredibly depressed and lethargic but when she came to Farm Sanctuary and she was finally allowed to live out her life the way she was intended to live out her life it was truly eye opening to see how she bl
ossomed as an individual and that's what made me abstain from all animal products was realizing that even though animals are murdered in the dairy industry but whether or not the animals are killed there's so being exploited and abused but we all have the moral obligation to reduce the amount of suffering that we inflict upon other living beings as much as we possibly can and for many people that is by going vegan running an animal sber is incredibly difficult and animal s beries don't get nearl
y enough support um as a whole there's so many of these animals to take care of and a lot of them because of the past that they have of the abuse that they face they have lifelong health issues also because of the way they've been genetically manipulated uh they have a lot of health issues so for example egg laying hens have been genetically modified to lay over 300 eggs every year when naturally they would only L around 12 eggs every year so this puts massive pressure on their bodies that they
really just can't handle um a lot of them end up needing surgery um and you know really intense supportive care that that takes a lot of time Additionally you know the the animals who've been bred for meat uh they've you know been bred to grow a lot larger and a lot heavier um than they naturally should and this causes a lot of um lifelong health issues for them as well you know a lot of our pigs have arthritis um you know we see chickens um and turkeys from the meat industry who eventually you
know lose the ability to stand or lose the ability to to to walk easily a lot of this you know takes a lot of time uh and Staffing to take care of these Special Needs animals and also you know the vet bills of of getting them surgery and um getting them their medications so it's it's a lot of really hard work I worked very hard trying to help shape policy that brought an end to chimpanzee research and I also now track um the remaining chimpanzees and Laboratories as they moved to Sanctuary um in
the United States the United States was the only country um that was still experimenting on chimpanzees um and we uh in 2015 A A large group of uh animal rights lawyers animal organizations but also many people in the scientific Community came together to say okay uh we shouldn't be experimenting on chimp panes this was a really important moment to actually preclude a certain level of research and on certain animals and I think preventing uh chimpanzees from being used in research um was a trem
endous Advance I've been studying uh dolphins and whales and their brains for 30 years uh I've also studied uh brain evolution in mammals self-awareness in other animals and in the past 15 years human non-human animal relationships and I am particularly interested in the intersection between science and animal law I'm the president of the whale Sanctuary project but I founded it in 2016 and I founded it in response to what I came to learn about what dolphins and whales endure living in concrete
tanks and marine parts I started to look into what their wellbeing is like in these places and I didn't like what I learned and I thought well well we need to change this um but I also knew that there was no way we can work to get all of these animals these dolphins and whals out of the tanks and put them back in the ocean because that that would be a death sentence for them uh because of the they'd lack the survival skills so what's the what's the next best thing is sanctuary and I looked aroun
d I saw successful sanctuaries for elephants and primates and so many other animals and I wanted to do something to give back to these animals that i' had studied for so long and that is why I founded the well Sanctuary project to enact if you will uh a change in how we relate to dolphins and Wales by uh taking what we know and and creating a new relationship with them through Sanctuary the whale Sanctuary project is in Nova Scotia in a big beautiful Bay called Fort hilford Bay it's on the easte
rn shore of Nova Scotia we found it after two years of searching on both coasts of North America it is next to a beautiful little town called sherbrook and the people there are have embraced the project it's over 100 acres of water space we'll have Veterinary Care it we'll do education and it will be the first Sanctuary for belugas and oras in North America and anywhere in the world really in terms of the amount of space that we're providing so we want this to really be a gold standard for how w
e can create more sanctuaries all over the world obviously that you know the the labor of it um is really hard but I would say the other um biggest battle that that we face and I think all animals sanctuaries fa is honestly the loss the loss takes a real toll on all of us in the rescue world because we spend so much time caring for these animals loving these animals and unfortunately a lot of them don't live very long because of the cruelty that they faced and the genetic modification that they'
ve faced at the hands of the meat industry and the Egg industry and the dairy industry so you know we have to uh do a lot of end of Life Care supporting them and keeping them comfortable for as long as we can before they eventually pass away it's just so heartbreaking um knowing that their deaths are so unnecessary and that their bodies shouldn't have been used like they were and that they deserved to live such long lives that they deserved um to never have to have gone through the trauma that t
hey went through you know being on the sanctuary and feeling that peace that Zen watching these animals the way they look at you the way you look at them the way they they're just living out their lives like the the cows there have a potential life of 18 20 years they're all all animals in the farm industry are killed as babies and so it's quite remarkable to see animals beyond the toddler phase living their beautiful lives at the sanctuary so I I strongly suggest to anyone come you'll you'll re
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