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Joanna Lumley is helping a farm sanctuary in Worcestershire raise enough money to secure the future of its animals.
The Farm Animal Sanctuary is based on Manor Orchard Farm, in Middle Littleton. Right now, the farm is up for sale, and the sanctuary (which has been running for 30 years), needs to buy the land to save more than 500 animals.
“If a suitable offer is made by someone else we might miss our chance,” the sanctuary’s Just Giving page reads.
“We have to do this. To transport them, many of our older animals, including a blind horse and aged blind sheep, although healthy and living a good life, would have to be euthanized for welfare reasons and on veterinary advice,” it continues. “And there is nowhere else for a mixture of over five hundred, mixed farm animals to go.”
The sanctuary needs to raise more than £940,000 to buy the farm. So far, at the time of writing, its Just Giving total stands at nearly £65,000.
By Christmas, it needs to raise £600,000 of the total, reports Evesham Journal.
Joanna Lumley’s animal advocacy
To help the sanctuary with its plight, Lumley, who is a patron of the sanctuary, recently attended a fundraiser and gave a speech.
She said: “It seems to me so terrible that we have been persuaded somehow not to mind what happens to farm animals, so when Jan Taylor founded The Farm Animal Sanctuary, it struck such a chord in my heart.”
“What we have got to do is somehow, between us all, we have got to raise the money needed to purchase the farm,” she added. “It sounds like a hell of a lot, it is a hell of a lot, but between us look how many words we could put out. Could we, between us, collect some of that money?”
Lumley is a keen advocate for animal rights. She has spoken out against fur, worked with Veganuary, and in 2020, she urged Tesco to be more transparent about the conditions from which its chickens come from.
In her speech for the sanctuary, she urged people to also reduce their meat intake or go vegan. She said: “We’ll all feel better when you know that blood isn’t around the plate that you’re eating from.”
To help The Farm Animal Sanctuary and find out more about its invaluable work, find its Just Giving page here.
