EAST WHITELAND — Great Valley High School students honored state Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery County, on April 19 as Compassionate Legislator of the Year.

• The school’s Animal Protection Club students awarded this titel to Leach for his work in food safety and farm animal protection. Leach spoke about current animal legislation in Pennsylvania and his reasons for becoming a vegetarian in 1986 after witnessing cruelty at a local farm.
• Leach is the chair of the Senate Animal Protection Caucus that worked on legislation to ban animal cruelty, currently live pigeon shoots, and greyhound racing. He also introduced the Safe Foods, Safe Families Bill, which limits the use of antibiotics in healthy farm animals if those drugs are also used to treat infectious diseases in human. It prohibits the administration of certain agents in agriculture, provides for inspection and testing of agricultural operations and encourages alternatives to administration of antimicrobial agents to animals.
• Students also honored Gene Baur, co-founder and president of Farm Sanctuary, with the club’s Animal Protector of the Year Award in memory of Hilda, a sheep he rescued 20 years ago from a pile of dead animals in Lancaster. Nick Cooney, author of “Change of Heart” and a representative of Farm Sanctuary, an animal protection organization, accepted the award and a donation to the organization on Baur’s behalf.
• Baur has worked to expose cruelty in factory farming through both photography and film since 1986. Students viewed a video of the Farm Sanctuary that exposed animal abuse and suffering in the farm agriculture industry. Students also asked him questions after the presentation about the environmental and health effects of the vegetarian diet.
• Past award honorees Oogy and Larry Levin, author of “Oogy: The Dog Only A Family Could Love,” made a special guest appearance at the event.
• Oogy is a nine-year-old Argentine dog previously used as a bait dog in a dog-fighting ring prior to being rescued and adopted by the Levin family. Levin shared Oogy’s story with the club, and now the dog is a beloved family member with no fear or anger toward people or other animals.
• According to the school district, the Animal Protection Club’s aim is to promote and extend compassion and responsibility to all living beings.