Article about Adele Douglass and Humane Farm Animal Care, by Katherine Reynolds Lewis in Northern Virginia Magazine.

1. œprofile
An Advocate for Animals
ADELE DOUGLASS GAVE UP HER LIFE SAVINGS TO BRING HUMANE TREATMENT
PRACTICES TO FARM ANIMALS THROUGH HER HUMANE CERTIFICATION ORGANIZATION.
BY KATHERINE REYNOLDS LEWIS • PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBERT MERHAUT
A
dele Douglass is searching for
piglets, bouncing over sun-drenched,
grassy hills in the
back of a black Range Rover.
The 67-year old founder of
Humane Farm Animal Care
warns that once we dismount
and approach the pig hut to
be careful of their nipping teeth. “The baby piglets
are very curious and want to come up to you. And
they bite you,” Douglass explains.
It’s the third stop in our porcine quest. The 260-
plus pigs raised on Ayrshire Farm in Upperville
roam through 110 acres of woods as they please,
seeking shade on this clear summer day. The previ-ous
two huts were empty, sending us back into the
truck piloted fearlessly by Ayrshire’s owner Sandy
Lerner. A co-founder of Cisco Systems in the 1980s,
Lerner now devotes herself to running the humane
and organic farm, as well as the associated restau-rant
and butcher/grocery store in Middleburg.
At the next hut, we hit paydirt. One sow, brown
aside from the pink sides of her snout, is rooting in
the underbrush beside the round-roofed metal hut,
her belly coated with fresh mud and her back and
face caked with dried mud. Peeking inside, we see a
cleaner looking mama pig flopped on her side, with
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2. V VOICES œ profile
AYSHIRE FARM OWNER Sandy Lerner with two of 260 pigs raised at the farm.
I saw there were
alternative methods that
weren’t outrageous, that
farmers could adapt,
that farmers could
change with a little
encouragement.
40 NOVEMBER 2014
a half-dozen babies nursing, playing and snoozing
in the hay. The piglets are white with black spots.
Lerner tromps into the fray, eager to get her
hands on baby pigs, while Douglass stays on the
far side of a low wire fence. She’s been bitten be-fore.
“That’s their natural be-havior.
That’s what they do,”
explains Douglass, a short,
rounded woman with neatly
cropped black hair and rim-less
glasses.
Explaining and defending
the natural behavior of farm
animals has become a life’s
work and passion for Doug-lass,
who moved from California to Northern Vir-ginia
in 1977 with her three young children. Born
and raised in New York City, she held an idealized,
“Old McDonald’s Farm” view of farm animals un-til
her eyes were opened in her work for New York
Rep. Bill Green in the 1980s. As Green’s personal
secretary, office manager and legislative assistant,
she took ownership of animal right’s issues. “They
figured since I had kids, I was capable of dealing
with the most difficult animal rights constituents,”
she recalls.
Gradually, an activist was born. The more Dou-glass
learned about standard farming practices, the
angrier she became. She grew more outraged with
each story of hens, cattle and pigs confined so tight-ly
that they turned on each other or became sick,
sometimes left to die. “If people knew how their
animals were raised, they would be appalled,” she
says. “I saw there were alternative methods that
weren’t outrageous, that farmers could adapt, that
farmers could change with a little encouragement.”
In 1987, the American Humane Association hired
her to open its Washington D.C. office, where she
could make a real difference on issues as varied as
animal testing in cosmetics, pets in public housing
and pet theft—which often leads to cruel treatment
or painful deaths. But she grew increasingly con-vinced
that an independent organization devoted
solely to the humane treatment of farm animals
would win broad support from the general public
and be able to make a meaningful difference. In
2003, she emptied her 401(k) of the $80,000 she’d
saved; accepted a $10,000 gift from her daughter
Holly; and launched Humane Farm Animal Care
as a nonprofit. Her goal was to create, and convince
farmers to follow, scientifically backed standards
focused on the welfare of the 10 billion farm ani-
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3. V VOICES
42 NOVEMBER 2014
mals raised each year in the U.S.
After all, consumers outraged
by books such as Matthew Scully’s
“Dominion,” Michael Pollan’s “The
Omnivore’s Dilemna” and docu-mentaries
like “Food Inc.” often
turn to organic food as the answer.
But while organic standards keep
antibiotics and pesticides out of the
food system and environment, they
govern nothing about the way that
animals are treated in the produc-tion
of eggs, milk, meat and other
food products. Enter the humane
certification. Douglass assembled
a few brave scientists to begin writ-ing
research-based standards for
the humane treatment of farm ani-mals.
The standards specify things
such as the animals’ access to food
and water, living conditions, wean-ing,
health care, handling and even
the slaughter process. The over-arching
goal is to prevent cruelty
and to allow animals to engage in
their normal behavior as much as
possible. Of the four scientists who
assisted her, only one, Joy Mench,
of the University of California, Da-vis,
came to Humane Farm’s launch announce-ment
with the media—the one with tenure, who
wasn’t afraid of losing her job in the face of criti-cism
from agribusiness.
s the pigs oink and wander among the
trees, Douglass bemoans the use of far-rowing
crates in many farms, which put
bars between mothers and their babies. The sows
have just enough room to lie down to nurse. Lerner
chimes in that the commercial pigs that are raised
for sale at market have it even worse because they
don’t even have room to move in order to lie down.
Indeed, many have been bred to be so fat—to pro-vide
more bacon—that their backs can’t even sup-port
their weight.
“That’s why (Humane Farm has) space re-quirements
for the market pigs. You can’t just
pack them in,” Douglass says. She praises farm-ers
such as Lerner, whose Ayrshire Farm was one
of the original farms to support her organization
in 2003 by becoming humane certified by Doug-lass’
organization. “At the beginning the produc-ers
were scared. They took risks in doing this,”
she says. “They got more and more enthusiastic
as they saw we were serious.”
In 2003, just 143,000 animals were raised un-der
Humane Farm’s standards. But last year, 86.7
million farm animals certified as humane. Douglass
attributes the growth to the push of consumers and
retailers demanding humanely farmed products as
well as the pull from farmers themselves seeing that
there’s a more sustainable and better way to raise
animals. Humane Farm has taken the opportunity
to revise its standards when new research or prac-tices
emerge that will help both producers and ani-mals.
For instance, an alternative anesthesia came
into use that didn’t require a veterinarian to travel
onto the range to give a shot before, for instance,
castrating a bull. Instead, the ibuprofen-like med-icine
can be given in water up to 48 hours before
the procedure. In 2012, Humane Farm revised its
standards to allow this treatment and embarked on
a campaign to let farmers know about the option.
While the Range Rover carries us from the pig
area to where the cattle range across the hillside,
œ profile
A
AYSHIRE FARM has 800 head of cattle in several distinct herding breeds, one
of which is the rare White Park cattle.
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4. WWW.NORTHERNVIRGINIAMAG.COM 43
“There are 10 billion
animals killed and
raised for food and 4
percent vegetarians in
the U.S. These animals
need relief. Our role is to
provide relief for those
animals.”
Douglass talks about the initial chal-lenges
in launching the organization.
At first, the U.S. Department of Agri-culture
wouldn’t allow the “certified hu-mane”
label unless it was accredited by
the International Organization for Stan-dardization.
So Humane Farm Animal
Care tackled the process and won ISO
certification. Having to navigate the ISO
requirements laid an important founda-tion
for the processes and procedures
the organization would follow in years
to come. “That was actually good for us,”
she says.
“The thing that surprised me was how
we get attacked by everyone,” she says.
“We get attacked by commodity groups.
We get attacked by animal rights groups
who think the answer is to become a veg-an.
There are 10 billion animals killed
and raised for food and 4 percent veg-etarians
in the U.S. These animals need
relief. Our role is to provide relief for
those animals,” Douglass justifies.
The support of the media and like-minded
farmers and activists proved to
be crucial in the early years of Humane
Farm, when Douglass worked seven days
a week, sometimes 18 hours a day. Her
dedication to the greater good was rec-ognized
with a Purpose Prize, awarded
by Encore.org in 2007 and her election
to the Ashoka Fellowship by the Asho-ka
organization in 2008, both honors
for people who have made a difference
through a socially useful venture. Lat-er
milestones included successful part-nerships
with Safeway and Sobey Su-permarkets,
which took years of work.
In 2012, Safeway required all suppli-ers
of store-brand cage-free and organic
eggs to be Certified Humane®. In 2013,
Sobey limited its “Better Food for All”
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program to Certified Humane® meat
producers. “The producers would call
the quality guy, Mike Talbott, at Safeway
and complain. Safeway didn’t back down
one little bit,” Douglass says, noting that
consumers can find Certified Humane®
products through an app available for
iPhone or Android.
The Range Rover rumbles along a
dirt path beside a pond, where five cows
are knee-deep in water, happily chew-ing
grass. Among Ayrshire Farm’s 800
head of cattle are several distinct breed-ing
herds, one of which is the rare White
Park cattle, only recently back from be-ing
endangered for years. The cows low
at the passing vehicle, as calves alter-nately
stroll beside the adults or cuddle
together at rest.
“Adele was the first person to figure
out that calves like to sleep in piles. This
is what calves do,” Lerner says. “They’re
herd animals and when you put them
alone they get neurotic.”
Ayrshire’s White Park cattle boast a
103 percent fertility rate because of the
proliferation of twins, she says, noting
that factory farms are lucky to see a 70
percent fertility rate. Ayrshire also pro-duces
humane-certified young dairy
beef, aka veal, as well as turkeys, chick-ens
and eggs.
Douglass recalls the first time she was
roasting an Ayrshire Farm chicken, while
watching a football game and smelled an
aroma that reminded her of something
in her childhood. “It took me about a
half hour to realize it was the smell of
roasting chicken, which you don’t smell
any more because the stuff you buy has
no taste, no flavor, no nothing. It’s un-believable
the difference,” she says.
Humanely farmed food may cost
more at the checkout counter, but the
overall cost will be lower when you take
into account the impact on the environ-ment
and your health, the two wom-en
agree. “When you eat my food, the
ground is better than before I raised the
food. We are actually net-carbon seques-ters,”
Lerner says. “It’s food for your body.
It’s only doing good things. You don’t
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have a loss of productivity; you’re not
getting environmental cancers. The price
you pay at the till is actually reasonable.”
Finally, we pull up in front of the
slaughterhouse and get out of the ve-hicle.
Lerner leads us into an immacu-lately
clean, grey metal warehouse-like
space. She explains that the fat in the
meat protects it from bacteria and oxi-dation,
which is what makes the food so
juicy. The Certified Humane® standard
specifies slaughter practices that keep
pain and stress to a minimum. For in-stance,
no animal can witness another
animal being killed and poultry can’t be
hung for more that 90 seconds. Doug-lass
remembers seeing a large chicken
company catch poultry with mechani-cal
devices that slammed the birds into
transport cages. The employee giving
her a tour explained that the meat was
sold in parts, so it “didn’t matter” if the
wings broke.
“It matters to those birds. There’s no
need for it. That bird is going to be trans-ported
to slaughter in pain,” she says.
“There’s no point of raising them right
and then stressing them in transport and
then in slaughter.”
ouglass developed her love
for animals during her child-hood
in New York City. She
D
grew up with a warm and close-knit Ital-ian
family, with aunts, uncles and cous-ins
always in the mix. “Everyone loved
animals. You never hurt animals, you
just didn’t,” she says. “I never doubted
that animals had feelings.”
The oldest of three girls born to Ruth
and Salvatore Perrone, Adele graduated
from high school, took an office job and
married co-worker Archie Douglass at
age 19. “I wanted to travel, get married
and have children. That’s what women
of my generation did,” she says. They had
three children: Holly in 1967, Brian in
1969 and Meredith in 1970, moving to
Connecticut, Vermont and finally Cali-fornia
for Archie’s work as an engineer.
Adele Douglass raised a family and sup-ported
local political causes on a volun-
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teer basis, often typing newsletters late
at night for the San Fernando Valley po-litical
caucus. “I was a voracious reader,”
she says, “I was always someone who was
into fairness and justice.”
When she moved to Herndon in 1977
and separated from her husband, Doug-lass
needed to earn her own living. She
did billing for a laboratory and worked
as a legal secretary before landing the
position in Green’s office, which led her
to her life’s calling. She never felt disad-vantaged
for not having a college degree,
and merely compensated by over-pre-paring
for every hearing or meeting or
discussion. “When you’re a woman and
you’re working in agriculture, let me as-sure
you, people are prejudiced against
you anyway,” she says. “What I would get
is not, ‘You don’t have a college degree,’
but ‘You don’t have a Ph.D.?’ ”
When she was on a committee of the
Federation of Animal Science Societies
to rewrite the Guide for the Care and Use
of Agricultural Animals in Research and
Teaching, she tried to make the point
that if dairy cows couldn’t be confined
for more than two weeks, pigs shouldn’t
be crated in gestation stalls. “The guy
turned to me and said, ‘Adele you’re not
an animal scientist, so you might not un-derstand
this, but a cow is bigger than
a pig.’ I looked at him and said, ‘I real-ize
I’m not an animal scientist but I did
study biology and they both are mam-mals,’”
she recalls. “The secret to that is
to talk to them like you’re talking to your
teenage kids. They all cringe because
they have mothers. They revert.”
Out of Douglass’s earshot, Lerner
praises her for championing humane
farming years before it was on anyone
else’s radar screen. “Adele is unique. She
was way ahead of the pack,” she says.
“She’s one of the few people I’ve dealt
with in life that is motivated by all the
right reasons. Talk about no personal
gain—she’s always hand to mouth.”
We’ve finished the farm tour and are
enjoying a humanely farmed meal at
Hunter’s Head Tavern, the pub-style res-taurant
Lerner owns just minutes from
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the farm in Upperville. The round wood-en
table is laden: an Iceberg wedge sal-ad
topped with bacon and egg; chicken
cobb salad; a French dip sandwich with
au Jus; and wienerschnitzel with a lem-on
caper sauce. Douglass orders a roast
beef sandwich with house-made beet
horseradish—holding the ciabatta bun
to avoid the gluten—and insists that ev-eryone
at the table share her strawberry
spinach salad.
She recalls a debate with a radio jour-nalist
who asked for scientific proof that
Certified Humane® meat is tastier than
conventional. “You don’t need science;
you have taste buds,” she told him. At
a 2004 taste test held by at Equinox in
Washington D.C. by chef Todd Gray, all
the humanely farmed meat was cho-sen.
She theorizes that when animals
are slaughtered while in pain or fear, the
adrenaline flooding their bodies ends
up flavoring the meat unpleasantly. Le-rner
credits the very low temperature at
which the meat is processed. “We don’t
melt the fat on the bird. The fat is still
intact in the meat, so it stays really, re-ally
moist when you cook it,” she says.
Douglass first saw a slaughterhouse
on a visit with animal scientist and ac-tivist
Temple Grandin, a member of Hu-mane
Farm’s scientific committee. She
felt trepidation, not knowing what to ex-pect.
It was an especially difficult time
for Douglass since her mother was dying
of cancer. “Those animals went to their
death peacefully. They had no idea. It
was calm and peaceful,” she says. “We
all die and that’s all we can wish for: to
go to our ends peacefully.”
As for Douglass, her plan is to die
at her desk. After using her retirement
funds for Humane Farm Animal Care,
there’s no other choice. In the meantime,
she hopes to push the number of hu-manely
farmed animals to 1 percent of
the total, which would be 100 million
animals a year.
“I am optimistic about the future of
farming,” she says. “Farmers work hard
and they want the best, and we have to
help them succeed.”
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