“It May Be Possible to Have an Ethical Egg”: A Chat With Gene Baur

Farm Sanctuary founder Gene Baur is an ultra-mega-uber vegan: he won’t eat eggs or honey, or wear wool, and he gives his turkeys a Thanksgiving feast every November. In this interview, he explains how to eat eggs guilt-free (treat your chickens like family), why humans aren’t necessarily carnivores (we don’t salivate when we see blood) and why factory-farmed food might not be as cheap as we think it is.

Baur’s organization has been involved with legislation to increase the room poultry have in hatcheries, to ban gestation crates — where pregnant pigs have no room to stand up until they give birth — and farrowing pens, the fenced-in stalls the pigs feed the piglets in. What does a guy who eats no dairy or meat do when he wants to kick back at the end of a long day of fighting for the rights of farm animals ? Well, it involves cookies — and not the kind you find online.

A longer interview with Baur can be found in the magazine, in which he explain how it is that a guy like him ended up in a McDonalds commercial and how turkeys have become so huge and altered that they can’t make baby turkeys normally.