We hope that by getting to meet our animals--in person at the sanctuary or through reading their stories and seeing their photos on our website or social media--helps to illustrate that in all the ways that truly matter, the animals our society typically considers “food” animals are every bit as deserving of consideration, rescue, and compassion as our beloved companion animals. Just like us, other animals have thoughts, feelings, preferences, and friends. They have lives that matter to them.
Though we can’t fit all the stories of the 600+ animals who call Peace Ridge home on any given day, much less all the stories of the thousands of animals we have rescued since our founding, each and every animals we’ve helped has their own story. Most of these stories are both heartbreaking and triumphant with animals taken from the worst conditions imaginable coming to a place where they can heal, trust, love, and make friendships with other rescued animals in a place where their needs always come first.
Each day, we have the power to leave the world a better place by making choices that help animals, people, and ours shared planet thrive. The single easiest thing we can do to show our love and respect for animals is to live vegan.
It isn’t just the animals on farms that you’ll save by going vegan, the research is clear that a vegan lifestyle is the best way to reduce our environmental impact. Animal agriculture is a leading cause of climate change, deforestation, land degradation, ocean acidification, and a whole host of other environmental harms while also being an inefficient way of feeding our planet. Fortunately, we can live happy and healthy lives without using animals.
So please, consider joining us in living vegan - for the animals, for the planet, and for our future.
Social Justice & Expanding Our Reach
Throughout our 25 year history, Peace Ridge’s work has always been grounded in social justice. We believe society needs to rethink the way that it views and interacts with animals in order to become a more peaceful and just society. We believe that social justice cannot be achieved unless we acknowledge the social injustice we perpetrate on animals.
Comprehensive humane education is an important part of our nonprofit mission work. Our educational programs bring the public to our shelters each year for educational tours, events, summer camps, classroom tours, lectures, and other learning opportunities, while our online and social media educational efforts reach countless people.
Sanctuaries Provide a Stage where people can come meet farmed animals while also starting to understand the interconnected ways that our broken food system harms animals, people, and our shared planet.
Each year in the U.S. alone, we slaughter roughly 10 billion land animals for food, yet most of us have no interactions with farmed animals. This is intentional. Billions of animals are hidden in plain sight, the vast majority of whom are living on filthy, crowded factory farms where they will never even go outside in their brief, miserable lives before being sent to slaughter at a tiny fraction of their natural lifespan.
Most people have been conditioned to think that farmed animals are lesser, that they don’t share the same emotions and thoughts and personalities that our beloved companion animals do. But when people meet the animals at our shelters, it is undeniable that in all the ways they matter, they are no different than the animals we share our homes with.
Most people aren’t used to seeing farmed animals as individuals with unique personalities, especially if they are seeing them in a farm setting. And that makes sense, if an animal is just trying to survive, if they can’t engage in normal species-specific behaviors, or form stable social hierarchies, you’ll never be able to see their personalities shine. Just like you’ll never see other people for who they truly are in an environment where they don’t feel safe.
And here, our animals feel safe. They have predictable routines, people they trust and often learn to like or love, friends in their own species, they have all their basic needs met and then some. This is their home. There is a peace in their eyes and an energy that you can’t fake. When we take in new rescues, while we work to build trust and report with them, it is seeing the others animals happy and safe that helps them let their guard down to realize maybe they too are finally ok.
In our modern world, where people are disconnected from farmed animals, Peace Ridge and similar sanctuaries provide a place where people can come meet the animals on their own terms, in a place where they feel safe. Year after year, we hear from people who tell us that coming to the sanctuary was a life-changing experience.
Sanctuaries are vegan makers – because once you make that connection, you can’t un-make it.