A sanctuary for all beings

Goatlandia Founder Deborah Blum talks non-violence, healthy eating, Measure J and why goats are the G.O.A.T.s

Deborah Blum (left) holding a baby goat during a tour of her animal sanctuary, Goatlandia. (Photos by Ezra Wallach)

Last Saturday, I visited Goatlandia Sanctuary, where Deborah Blum, the animal rescue and adoption site’s founder and executive director, was guiding a group of about a dozen along a large, rural property where she now lives full-time.

I got a chance to catch up with Blum, who worked for two decades in San Francisco before founding the animal rescue and adoption site in rural Sebastopol, earlier this week. Blum became vegan overnight after a seeing footage of a slaughterhouse, and now she dedicates her life to the well-being of animals, including the many pigs, horses, sheep and geese that are housed on her property.

Blum has decided to shut down Goatlandia Kitchen, which opened this July, but to keep the kitchen and event space open so it can be used for cooking classes, fundraising dinners and more, including a “mocktail” class this December.

The Goatlandia Sanctuary is populated mostly by rescued boy goats who—because they can’t produce milk—otherwise would’ve been killed at dairies. Blum and the Goatlandia staff can be reached at info@goatlandia.org if you want to book a tour or event or have any questions.

Q: You talked on the tour about how the sanctuary represents how you live in line with your values? Tell me more about those values and where they came from.

The values that I was kind of referencing were ones of kindness and compassion. I believe that we can be kind to all beings, not just humans, but animals as well. It's about the belief called ahimsa. It's a Buddhist belief, and it means doing no harm. I want to live in a way that causes minimal harm to myself and others, and not eating animals and not supporting an industry that's so cruel is putting that belief in practice, which I think is really empowering and wonderful.

I also believe in being healthy. One of the best things that we could do for ourselves, for our health, is to stop eating animal products. You know, everybody's heard of heart disease and high blood pressure and diabetes, but no one knows the name of the disease that you get from lack of protein, which is what we get accused of all the time, like, “Oh, you're not going to get enough protein.” But you know, the disease for that is called Kwashiorkor. Like most people haven't even never heard of it, because it's really not a problem.

Thirdly, I like taking care of the environment. I think it's all of our job to do that. It's no secret that we've caused a change in the climate, that we're using more resources than we need to. We're using 1,000 gallons of water to make a pound of beef—like we're using so much resources as a species. To proactively take care of the planet is to not engage in an industry that's so polluting, which is animal agriculture. It's one of the most polluting human activities.

I think what's interesting is that most people, unless they're a psychopath, you know, they want to have a good life. They want to be happy. They want to have friends. They want their friends to be happy and healthy. They want to do the things that they love. But you know, there's no reason that we can't share that value with others—humans and animals. Most people agree that their pets have emotions, and they're happy to see them. And animals have emotions too, including the ones that are eaten by a lot of people. If I were to love animals, but continue to eat animal products and pay someone to do the dirty work of raising them and confining them and killing them, I would be a hypocrite.

Why do you think that so many people who value human beings don’t have the same feeling about animals?

I think there's lots of reasons. Food is very cultural. Food is very comforting. It's very nourishing. And we've grown up to associate certain foods with certain emotions, with holidays, with things like that. It takes time to change those things. I think that people are used to eating what they want to eat, and they're not comfortable going outside their comfort zone, and they're not comfortable trying something new.

A lot of people that are omnivores think that we as vegans are giving something up. But that's not really the case. I eat burgers, I eat burritos, I eat tacos, I eat everything else. They just don't have dead animals in them.

I think a lot of people just, sadly, don't have the empathy to really feel deeply for another being. I'd like to think that more people did, and maybe that will change, but it's just, you know, people are fundamentally very selfish creatures, and it's like we care about ourselves first and then others.

And I also think, quite frankly, a lot of people have never seen slaughterhouse footage. There's a lot of people who've never killed an animal, and I think that if they bore witness to that, if they walked into the gigantic chicken farms that we have here in Sonoma County and saw all these birds crammed in there and smelled the air, and they wouldn't be able to breathe, and their eyes are burning because of all the fecal matter, then they’d think a little bit differently about their food. I think there's a lot from that's hidden from the public because it's such a big industry, and I think if people bore witness to it, they might feel differently. I also feel like on the on the positive side, feeding people really good plant-based food is one of the strongest things that you could do to change people's minds.

Measure J is complicated and has caused a lot of controversy and strong opinions, but I think the most significant thing it has done is put a clear line between those who are okay with animals being killed for food but aren’t okay with “factory farms,” whatever that means, and those who aren’t okay with animals being killed no matter the circumstances. What do you think about that?

It's really interesting. I mean, you could make the argument that, yes, if you look at a smaller cow farm, whether it's a dairy or meat operation, oftentimes the cows are out on pasture, and it looks a lot nicer. But at the end of the day, that animal is still being killed. Every animal, if given the opportunity, will run from death—like, they don't want to die. So there's still that time when their life is taken from them violently. And that doesn't have to happen. We don't need to do that to feed ourselves, you know.

And ironically, concentrated animal feeding operations actually take less resources than ranching operations. Like, if all the beef that was consumed in the world were to convert to pasture raised in a more beautiful setting or whatever, we would need like three planets. All these notions of these, like, big free range farms and all this—like, yeah, I mean, it looks more attractive when you drive by them, but they're actually using more land and more resources because of that, you know?

I'm really sad about Measure J, because there's just so many mistruths floating around. At the end of the day, there are programs to help farmers transition from animal-based products to plant-based crops. There's one in particular called Transfarmation, and they actually work with farmers that want to get out of raising animals for food and transition to plant-based products, and they help them financially through the process. They help them with mentoring, and that's super powerful. So you know, now you're taking a chicken farmer who doesn't want to keep raising and killing chickens and helping him learn how to grow mushrooms, and it's better off for everybody. It's cleaner: there's no violence, there's no blood, there's no excess water usage. It's a win-win all the way around.

So I think that is the sort of direction we need to look in: how can we transition away from an industry that's inherently inhumane, that is making us sick and that's destroying the environment into something that's more healthy? And let's do it through invitation and inspiration instead of shame and pointing fingers. Let's just invite people to live in a way that's better for everyone.

Change is hard, and humans don't like change, and telling someone that they can't run their business the way they've run it for five generations is hard. I understand that. I understand the farmers’ point of view, and I understand the animal activist point of view. But I think fundamentally, let's just all look at our core values, and let's think about how we want to live. Everybody wants to be healthy, they want to live long, and for the most part, they want to be kind, right? So let's carry those values into our food choices. I mean, it's really that simple.

It seems like you are more libertarian about the issue than the animal activists behind Measure J. Is that fair?

In terms of the group that's behind Measure J, DxE—they're a radical group, and they break laws and steal property, and I don't think that you need to do that to inspire people to change. I would love to see legislation pass. I definitely think we need more legislation around animal welfare. But again, it's a very touchy subject when you start talking about people's businesses. So the whole thing is very complicated, but all we're trying to do is share the truth in a pleasant way. You know, we're not showing videos of slaughter at the sanctuary, but we're trying to just tell people like, “Hey, look, there's this other way.”

I imagine many of the people who go on your tours seem to have a comparatively shallow, so to speak, relationship with the animals. Like, a group of a dozen people go into the area where the baby goats are, and they only see them for a few minutes. They take a picture with them, hold them and then they leave. And maybe later that day they have something with goat milk in it or with meat. Does that weird you out at all?

No, because I used to be that way for a long time. I grew up in suburbia, so I didn't have a lot of farm experience. But I'd go to the zoo, or I'd see animals occasionally at petting zoos, and I would just think, Oh, they’re so cute. But I didn't put it together because I didn't witness the process and because no one told me, like, “Oh, you know that cow is going to be killed next week, and then it's going to be a hamburger.”

I love it when people come to the sanctuary and get excited and they're like, “Oh, he's so cute,” because that's our instinctive human reaction—to be attracted to something and to find it interesting. That's beautiful. That's a great emotion. And yes, they don't all make the connection, but that's often why I talk on the tour about how this animal wouldn't have been alive if we hadn't taken them in, because this is what normally happens. Or, you know, in the case of chickens, like male chickens are thrown into a grinder alive because they can't make eggs, like that's a baby chicken. When people eat baby back ribs, that's a baby pig. I talk about those things, but I try and talk about it lightly, because I don't want to frighten anyone and I don't want to make anyone feel guilty. But at the same time, I'm trying to bridge that knowledge gap, and I'm trying to have them make the connection.

I always target my conversation or my presentation. I edit it slightly depending on the group I'm talking to. So, if I have a group of mothers with their kids visiting, then I might talk about, like, babies being taken from moms. I've had audiences before with lots of men that have on cowboy hats and boots. I don't know their background, but they clearly enjoy their meat, and they don't want to hear about it. And I have a slightly different presentation with them. You have to read the room and know how to talk to people to have them open their hearts and their minds a little bit.

Why are goats not always grouped together with other animals like cows and chickens in animal welfare debates? And why are you attracted to goats in particular?

I think because goats are not a widely eaten meat in Northern California. If you look at the entire world, goats are one of the more popular meats, actually, because in certain countries, it's easier to drive a herd of goats around than a herd of cows, like they're just smaller and easier to manage. So I think, like in the American eye, goats are still viewed as different than, say, an agricultural animal like a cow or a pig or a chicken or a duck. So that's the difference there.

But the reason why I love goats is just because they're super outgoing and confident. They like interaction with each other. They're slightly mischievous. They're kind of like dogs, but they're goats instead.