What Is a Vegan Sanctuary?
People sometimes assume Riza is a kind of farm — a place where animals are cared for, but still, in some way, “used”. It isn’t. And the difference matters, so we want to explain it clearly.
No animal here works for us.
In farms, even kind ones, animals are asked for something: milk, eggs, wool, labour, or offspring. At Riza, they aren’t. Our hens are not kept for their eggs — when they lay, the eggs are given back to the hens themselves, never sold or eaten by us. Our sheep, like Nunu, are never sheared for profit; if she’s sheared, it’s purely for her own comfort and health. Nobody here pulls a cart, gives rides, or is milked.
An animal at Riza doesn’t have a job. They just have a life.
They stay until the end, naturally.
Every animal who comes to us stays for the rest of their life, however long or short that turns out to be, and however much care it requires. Merlin, a kid goat with a neurological condition, gets daily support that has nothing to do with what he can “give back” — we care for him because he’s here, not because he’s productive. When an animal at Riza dies, it’s from age or illness, never for consumption.
No new births
We don’t breed the animals in our care. Whenever possible, males and females are kept separate, and males are sterilised as a rule. Every space we have should go to an animal who already exists and already needs it.
We won’t pretend it always goes to plan. An accident happened, and six babies were born at Riza who weren’t planned for. It happens even with the best intentions, and when it does, we take responsibility: they are now part of Riza as anyone else, cared for the same way, staying for life. But it doesn’t change the principle — a new birth means one less space for an animal waiting to be rescued, and it’s why prevention stays the priority.
Nobody is bought.
We don’t buy animals from breeders or markets, even to “save” them — paying for an animal keeps that trade profitable for someone else, and it doesn’t stop the cycle. The animals who come to us arrive through rescue: seizures, abandonment, people who can no longer look after them, and situations that had nowhere else to go.
Not a petting zoo.
We’re open to the public, but that doesn’t make us a petting zoo! This is the animals’ space, not a place set up for people to touch them. Whether an animal wants contact is entirely up to them, every single time. Some of them, like Wall-e, will walk straight up to visitors looking for attention. Others, like Frederico, would rather keep their distance, and that’s just as valid.
Before anyone comes in, we explain this clearly: you don’t pet an animal unless they approach you and ask for it. Nobody chases a goat down for a cuddle or picks up a hen to hold. Here, consent isn’t a nice idea; it’s the baseline.
Why we let people meet them
Opening the sanctuary to visitors and sharing our animals’ stories online isn’t just outreach — it’s the core of why sanctuaries exist at all. It’s very different to read about a pig than to stand in front of one and watch how he explores, how he reacts, and how much he is someone. That encounter is often what shifts how people think about farmed animals altogether. Every animal at Riza — Reed, Albert, and Luna, all of them — ends up telling that story just by being who they are.
This is what we mean when we say Riza is a vegan, anti-speciesist sanctuary: not a farm with kinder conditions, but a place built entirely around what our animals need, never around what they can offer us.
