This document summarizes the goals and activities of Eden Farm Animal Sanctuary and Matilda's Promise Vegan Education Centre. The sanctuary provides a lifelong home for over 100 residents including chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, sheep, and cats who were abused, abandoned, or exploited. The education center aims to promote veganism and animal rights through outreach and a documentary film titled "You Haven't Lived Until You've Hugged a Turkey" which highlights the intelligence and personalities of turkeys. While sanctuaries provide refuge, they are not a full solution as there are billions of farm animals and education is needed to encourage people to stop breeding and exploiting animals.

1. Who are the other animals on whose
behalf we advocate?
Eden Farm Animal Sanctuary
&
Matilda’s Promise
Vegan Education Centre

2. Thank you:
Vegan Ireland (Aga, Gloria & Irena) & Bernie, Ed & Roger
Activists & scientists for advice & contributions,
Andrew Baxter, Editor, Declan – friendship & lifts to the
vet, Cif,(artwork), Sebastien (website & support),
Sany without whose love for the turkeys the movie would
not have happened,
Ronnie, partner & special friend, for supporting me and
giving the residents of Eden their home

3. • History of Sanctuary
• Introduction to Residents
• Why the Education Centre?
• Why I made the movie
Dorothy &

4. May 2008
Bertie & Cara, triplets

5. January 2009
Chickens used for breeding/
due to be slaughtered at Petting Farm
Henry, Mamou, Matilda, Money Penny,

6. Veganism & Getting to know other animals
Our common biology
Eyes, ears, nose, mouth –
even eyebrows and eyelashes
Their Sentience – my consciousness
Willow

7. Families, friends, lives that are important to them
Psychological make up that is very
similar to our own
Capacity for Pleasure
Cara & Willow

8. Becoming vegan
Leg of Lamb

9. What is Eden & What is a Sanctuary?
Sanctuary Defined: Refuge, Place of Safety, Religious
connotations of sacredness & paradise
Eden is not a visitor centre; it is a home for the residents at Eden.

10. Bertie
• Home to 102 residents
• Chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, sheep, cats
• Abused, abandoned, or otherwise oppressed by our use
of them for food in animal agricultural/backyard
situations
• Lifelong home (we do not rehome)

11. Nature of Sanctuary
Freeman, neurological difficulty,
unwanted, bullied
Freeman
Perspective of Transpecies Psychology: More in common
biologically, psychologically, & socially than the
differences that are used to justify our oppression of
them
The aftermath of violation in the same regardless of species
Emotions: Fear, Despair, Helplessness: Freeman couldn’t stand
& was starving. You can see the defeat and terror in his eyes

12. Same interventions that help us recover from trauma help non human
animals: stability, safety, love, compassion
Joy, a rescued
caged hen

13. They teach us about themselves & how
our use of them hurts them
Egg laying hens are
very friendly, cheerful,
and curious. They are
almost always busy.
Egg laying takes an
enormous toll on their
health and their
suffering is horrific.
Rescued from
Free Range,
backyard
situations
(very high
rate of illness

14. • Challenging
• Resident’s Health is compromised because of
breeding and treatment
• Ethical dilemmas
• Financial worries
The Geese Police, Dorothy, Marjorie &

15. What is the Problem & Are Sanctuaries the answer?
• Without undermining the value of sanctuary for individual
lives, it is worth pointing out that sanctuaries,
without education, are for the benefit of the few but not the
many
• It is the many we need to concern ourselves with
• There are billions of non human animals who need to be
rescued. It is impractical to imagine that sanctuaries can cope
• Sanctuaries are not the answer to our use of other animals: we
need to stop breeding them.

16. Matilda’s Promise
Animal Rights & Vegan Education Centre
Matilda & Laura

17. You Haven’t Lived Until You’ve Hugged a
Turkey
• I wanted to show people who turkeys are Maeve
• Movie is a representation of non-human animals in the light in which we know
and love them at Eden
• Visitors to Eden expressed surprise at how we are with the residents.
Nothing particular to us
The inherent trust and love farmed animals have for the humans who use them
It makes our betrayal of them all the worse.
• Movie situated in context of scientific facts on sentience and cognition in other
animals.
• Reason: I did not want it dismissed as the product of the imagination of an
eccentric or as anecdotal. It is rooted in scientific fact because I believe I have a
responsibility to make others aware of those facts, as I become aware of them

18. • Designed for non-vegans and thus it parallels my own
journey to veganism to some extent.
• Deliberately positive in order to attract non-vegan
viewers.
• Feel free to use it in your own outreach
• Material in the website www.matildaspromise.org

19. Other Animals’ Voices
Who are these beings that we
use, hurt and kill?
Maeve & Marian

20. Other Animals’ Voices
Who are the turkeys we breed, harm, and kill for food?
We often see the non-human animals we oppress referred to as ‘The Voiceless’. I
do not believe they are voiceless. They have voices and they use them, constantly.
It is no reflection on them that we do not understand their language. But we share
a common body language and a language of emotion through which they have a
lot to tell us if we listen.
In the movie ‘You Haven’t Lived Until You’ve Hugged a Turkey’, they use this
common language to give an account of who they are.
Their story is rooted in scientific fact, and their voices are joined, in this
documentary, by the voices of the scientists who investigate their lives.
Together they illustrate that other animals have comparative cognitive and sensory
capacities to our own that enable them to experience and to be aware of the
suffering that our use inflicts on them.
They are not voiceless; listen to them and they will speak to you of justice and of
love.