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Best-selling Author Gene Baur Comes Home to Ithaca, N.Y. to Promote the Critically Acclaimed “Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food”

"A stunning indictment of factory farming and the way most Americans obtain their food

. . . A life-altering read."

~Booklist (starred review)

ITHACA, NY - July 8, 2008 - On Saturday, July 12, Bookery II will host a reading and book signing of Farm Sanctuary President and Co-founder Gene Baur's new national best-seller, "Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food" published in March by Touchstone (a division of Simon & Schuster). This event will be held at Bookery II in Ithaca from 2 to 4 p.m. Books will be available for purchase at this event, which is free and open to the public.

When Gene Baur, president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, began visiting stockyards to document conditions, he was appalled by what he found. Amid the stench and filth, animals were deprived of their most basic needs. Those who were injured or sick were destined to be unceremoniously thrown onto the "dead pile," rather than receive proper care. But when a sheep who had been cast aside and left for dead raised her head and looked at Baur, he was inspired to take immediate action. He rescued the sheep that fateful day, and "Hilda," as she was soon known, became the first resident of Farm Sanctuary, the nation's leading farm animal protection organization.

"Farm Sanctuary" depicts the plight of the animals who are victims of industrial farming. The truth is that farm production today does not depend on the family farmer with a small herd of animals, but instead resembles a large, assembly-line factory. Animals raised for human consumption are not only confined for the entirety of their lives, but also often live without companionship, fresh air, or even adequate food and water.

"Farm Sanctuary" is a thought-provoking examination of the ethical questions involved in the production of beef, poultry, pork, milk, and eggs. It addresses the systematic mistreatment of the ten billion farm animals who are exploited specifically for food in the United States every year-as well as the plight of farmers who fall victim to the "get big or get out" mantra embraced by corporate agribusinesses.

Throughout, Baur shares the triumphs and ongoing struggles of more than twenty years on the front lines of the animal protection movement, from Chicago's foie gras ban to Florida legislation outlawing cruelly confining gestation crates for breeding pigs. He also introduces some of the special creatures who have found shelter at Farm Sanctuary-from Maya, a "downed" stockyard calf found too injured to walk (and thus left for dead) to Rudy, Truffles, and Terrin, all pigs who were rescued after falling out of trucks on busy interstate highways.

"Farm Sanctuary" urges readers to extend the reach of human compassion and consume a kinder plate, making a better life for animals and for themselves.

Baur has visited more than 30 cities in promotion of this national best-seller. This book and these presentations have touched the lives of many, awakening the public to the realities of factory farms and motivating them to take action on behalf of farm animals.

For more information about "Farm Sanctuary," please visit www.farmsanctuary.org.

About the Author:

Gene Baur is the president and co-founder of the nation's leading farm animal protection organization, Farm Sanctuary, which works to end cruelty to farm animals and promotes compassionate living through rescue, education, and advocacy. Since 1986 his organization has not only helped to enact groundbreaking laws and policies to help prevent sick and diseased animals from ending up on our menus but has also rescued sick, abandoned and abused animals from farms, stockyards and slaughterhouses across the country. Baur and his colleagues provide, at their shelters in New York and California, a safe home and a healthful life for animals who are in desperate need of rescue.