Farm animal sanctuaries rescue and provide lifelong care for animals from agricultural contexts. They serve welfare, educational, and advocacy functions, but face significant resource and ethical questions.
Farm animal sanctuaries provide genuine welfare benefit to the individual animals they rescue — often animals who would otherwise have no prospect of a life free from exploitation. Their educational role is also significant: encounters with individual pigs, cows, and chickens have demonstrably changed attitudes toward animal agriculture in visitor studies. The tension between resource-intensive individual care and broader systemic change is real, but the two are not mutually exclusive. Sanctuaries that combine welfare with advocacy, education, and policy engagement maximise their impact.