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The Story of Harold Brown – Former Cattle Farmer, Now Animal Rights Activist and Vegan

by Jennie Richards · Published September 14, 2017 · Updated March 11, 2019

Growing up on his family’s cattle ranch in Michigan, Harold Brown was a fifth-generation family farmer. In interviews, he talks about when he was a young boy feeling deeply disturbed by the killing of animals on his family’s farm because he loved the animals so much and felt empathy for them. He witnessed the deep disconnect that happened when the adults who worked the farm slaughtered the animals so dispassionately without expressing any emotion. He felt confused and distraught by seeing so much cold heartedness toward the animals that he recognized and knew, and said he innately knew that causing suffering and pain to animals wasn’t right, otherwise he said, “I wouldn’t feel so much pain and sadness.”

Brown says, when it came time to do something on the farm that required hurting or killing an animal, he learned to suppress his compassion and feelings. He relates how he visualized having a “compassion switch” on his heart, and he would envision turning it off every time he would have to kill, butcher and eat an animal. He explained how he would turn the “compassion switch” on for some animals like his pets, but not for the farm animals. Another device he learned to use when he had to do something he thought was objectionable or not right, would be to say a three-word phrase to himself, “I don’t care.” He said the phrase effectively disconnected him emotionally, spiritually and mentally from seeing the animal as a live being, or one he was hurting. “I would just say ‘I don’t care,’ when I needed to eat, or hunt, or kill.” But now he focuses on a completely different phrase when he’s in an uncomfortable place, instead he says, “I care. Because when you say ‘I care’ you have to become engaged. It’s where grace, forgiveness, gratefulness, humbleness and peace come from.”

Brown’s life radically changed when he had a heart attack at 18 years old. Because of consuming a heavy meat-based and animal product diet, his father also experienced a heart attack at a very young age as well. Brown said there came a point in his young life, when he and his brother thought they were going to take over the family farm, but instead they decided to leave the family cattle business and together pursue a different life and career. They relocated to Ohio and with the move, made significant life changes.

In Ohio, he confronted and questioned his indoctrination into eating animals and raising and killing animals for food. “There’s a systemic problem with our culture — it’s our ego that prevents us from being and living in our heart, and because of this, our disconnection allows us to treat animals as a commodity and treat the environment very destructively. It’s a destructive world-view that we’ve developed and come to accept, and it’s a way of not looking beyond ourselves. We need to open our eyes and our hearts to not just what we want, but what the world needs and what all of creation needs.”

In his new home, Brown found and connected with a vegetarian community that was concerned about environmental issues, health and healing, and spiritualism. In his earlier life, his belief that he was “feeding a hungry world” drove him, but he said it took a crisis for him to wake up from the dominant culture of animal agriculture and raising animals for food. Brown says our culture is constantly reinforcing the eating of animal products and our media floods us with images and messages from large corporations about animal products in our food. In the film Peaceable Kingdom, which Brown was interviewed, he says, “We have so many faces to put with those products in the grocery stores. To me that’s a sacred life, that’s a friend.” He goes on to say in the film, “Being a former animal farmer, at times you don’t even feel worthy of forgiveness for the things you have done to the animals.” He acknowledges the large animal agriculture corporations and their manipulative, deceptive marketing slogans like “humane meat,” that just aren’t true and exist to purely drive consumers to buy products and try to make consumers feel better about buying animal products. But Brown says, “there’s absolutely no way to kill an animal humanely. The definition of humane says to show kindness, compassion and mercy. But with farm animals we never show them mercy. These words should not be used or applied to animal agriculture at all. They’re just not true.”

Brown became a vegan and now considers himself a “farmer of compassion.” He says, “Veganism isn’t a lifestyle choice, it’s a moral and ethical way of being in the world. The core is the moral concern for the dignity and respect of the animals or the ‘other.’ Veganism is about radical inclusion, it’s about everyone and everything coming into a circle of compassion and being treated with kindness.”

“We have pets and we love them, and they are so dear to us—and we would never consider hurting them. But we have no problem with hurting and eating farm animals. It’s a dichotomy. It’s this double standard. One is worthy of our regard and one is not. One is worthy of our love, but the other is not. But we can learn to love any animal, and they can learn to love us. All animals are worthy of our regard and love.”

Brown’s life now has become about advocating for animal justice, animal rights, social and environmental justice, veganism and a more peaceful way of living in the world. “All I am to do in my life is to plant seeds. The seeds of love, compassion, and kindness. I’m a farmer of compassion. I now nurture people like seedlings to become better people.”

He has created a nonprofit organization called Farm Kind to help teach compassion and kindness for farm animals, the environment, and to promote a vegan diet. Animals just want good food, a safe place to live, good shelter — they just want what we do. If we truly want inner peace, then we have to take the journey. The kingdom of heaven is in ourselves.”

Two-Part Interview

Our Coinhabitants (on Supreme Master TV.com), By Animal World

Harold Brown: From Cattle Farmer to Animal Advocate, Part 1

Harold Brown: From Cattle Farmer to Animal Advocate, Part 2

Film Documentaries

Brown appeared in two documentaries: Peaceable Kingdom (2004) and Peaceable Kingdom – The Journey Home (2009) Available at www.peaceablekingdomfilm.org