Vegan activists across the nation are focused on nine lambs in Dayton, Ohio, that are currently grazing the campus lawn at Antioch College. The lambs are part of the Solar Sheep Project, a sustainable pasture-to-plate initiative run by students to supply the college’s dining hall with ethically-raised meat.

The college and its lambs are at the center of intense pressure from multiple groups, including PETA’s president, the mother of a deceased vegan student, and protestors battering the school with phone calls and social media posts, calling for the lambs to be released.

The lambs in question help manage campus grounds, saving $5,000 a year in mowing costs alone to maintain the school’s five-acre solar panel array. The grazing project is part of Antioch Farm, the student-staffed working farm and learning laboratory providing almost half the dining hall’s total food supply. Click here for an interactive tour of the farm.

According to its website, the farm is guided by principles that go above and beyond USDA organic standards for soil health, local water quality, and biodiversity. Even the activists’ photos and videos of the lambs show them browsing contended on verdant pasture with tall, healthy grass that dramatically contrasts the squalid conditions of factory farms.

So, why target nine lambs and a group of students feeding their campus using the highest ethical standard of livestock care?

The conflict began this summer when the lambs caught the attention of sociology professor Dr. David Nibert of nearby Wittenberg College and author of three animal rights books outlining abolitionist vegan ideology. Nibert told the DailyBeast he felt a “need to become an advocate for these lambs.”

When he first encountered the lambs, Nibert assumed they were too young to be away from their mothers based on how they huddled together in the pasture. What Nibert failed to understand, however, is that the lambs were being given access to additional forage through a creep grazing system. A creep grazing system enables smaller-sized animals to access a separate pasture where larger livestock cannot go. This allows them to obtain adequate forage without competition or bullying from larger members of the flock or herd.

Nibert has spent the last several months prompting online followers and students to call, email, and post online to pressure Antioch in a way the college’s administration labeled in a statement as  “exactly the opposite of self-direction and thoughtful open-mindedness that institutions of higher education aspire to foster.”

In August PETA issued an open letter to Antioch president Dr. Thomas Manley promising to relocate the lambs and replace them with “healthy vegan meat” for the students, likely referring to ultra-processed, lab-created products. While PETA president Ingrid Newkirk blamed the school for “insensitivity” and “promoting a filthy meat-eating habit,” she crossed the line by stating that going vegan can “reduce a person’s carbon footprint by 73%” and eliminating animal agriculture would reduce global land use by 75%. No studies were cited to support these numbers and according to the EPA, US livestock like the Antioch lambs account for 3% of total emissions while according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization global livestock use accounts for only 30% of global land use, including feed crops.

Ironically, PETA’s “Vegan Report Card” rating on how adequately schools provide dining options for vegan students gives Antioch College an “A” grade.

PETA’s involvement caused the opposition to Antioch’s Solar Sheep to escalate including several threats as well as a death threat left on the private voicemail of a college staff member. Yellow Springs Police Chief Brian Carlson quoted the message:

“I just got a message from PETA about the animals that you people want to slaughter. Nine lambs to feed your college students. I should slaughter your f------ family, b----.”

Antioch refuses to capitulate to the pressure, saying Nibert’s hostile approach is antithetical to the college’s values. 

“The majority of our students are omnivores,” says a statement from the college. Antioch spokesperson told the DailyBeast, “It is ironic that our community, which seeks to find better and more sustainable ways of living, has become a target because of our commitment to sourcing ethically and locally raised food.” 

While Nibert, Newkirk and their antagonistic cohorts claim to be on the side of compassion and decency, their behavior demonstrates a commitment not to the feelings of others, but to uninformed, uneducated, emotional responses to proper livestock management. Hostile behavior, fake facts, and threats over the phone utterly fail to demonstrate the “compassion, environmental conscience, and prudence” Newkirk demanded in her letter.

Abolitionist vegans critique animal agriculture for causing death, but many more animals are killed in the fumigation, spraying, habitat removal, land degradation, and mechanical implements used in standard plant agriculture. Antioch Farms has found a carbon-neutral way to provide hundreds of pounds of protein-rich food for its student body with only 9 deaths involved. Nibert’s myopic attack of a few lambs visible at a school only promotes ignorance about where food comes from and perpetuates the invisibility of the animals that suffer in industrial feedlots.

Goldsmiths College, University of London London recently announced that it would no longer serve beef in its school cafeterias in an alleged bid to combat climate change, but the effort only shows the institution’s lack of understanding about livestock and the importance of animal protein. Instead of jumping on the no-meat bandwagon, Antioch is providing students and faculty with a demonstration of how better meat is possible and how livestock provides us with more than just a source of protein.

Both vegan and meat-eating sustainability advocates agree that agriculture needs to focus on biodiversity and soil-health to feed us in a more ethical way, so why attack a student farm doing just that?

The forthcoming documentary and book project Sacred Cow is dedicated to educating the general public about why we need livestock in a well-managed food system to provide not only vital nutrition, but ecosystem services like forage management. Antioch’s Sheep Solar Project is a prime example of how our food system can evolve to support better meat.

Allie Hymas raises Icelandic sheep for meat and fiber in Southern Oregon's Rogue Valley. In addition to writing about sustainable agriculture, Allie supports and advocates for family farms as Northwest Farmer's Union secretary. Learn more @hymasfamilylamb or www.hymasfamilylamb.com.