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HSUS head coming to Nebraska
Wayne Pacelle is coming to Nebraska.
The controversial leader of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) will speak at an HSUS town hall meeting this Sunday evening in Lincoln. The meeting announcement says Pacelle will give an overview of the organization’s animal protection work, including the welfare of farm animals.
Pacelle tells Brownfield his visit to the state is fairly routine, that he attends town hall meetings all over the U.S. There has been speculation that Nebraska could be one of the next battleground states in HSUS’s efforts to impose more stringent animal welfare standards—but Pacelle denies that any such move is imminent.
“Our agenda for Nebraska is no different than our agenda in many other states,” Pacelle says. “It’s to fight animal cruelty. It’s to raise awareness about animal welfare issues, and to forge coalitions and partnerships—including agricultural leaders—to find solutions to some of the problems that animals face in society.”
Nebraska is a ballot initiative state, but Pacelle says that’s a last resort for HSUS. “It’s not something that we look forward to doing. It’s very expensive and very challenging,” he says. “We really prefer to work things out as we did in Ohio, as we did in Michigan, as we did in Maine, as we did in Colorado.”
To this point, HSUS has concentrated most of its efforts on egg, hog and veal production. With Nebraska being one of the nation’s largest cattle states, we asked Pacelle if HSUS has specific concerns with the cattle feeding industry.
“We haven’t really spent much time on that,” Pacelle says. “There are issues certainly—there’s been public criticism of some of the feedlot operations—but we haven’t really been at the center of any of those debates.”
The HSUS town hall meeting will be held at the Lincoln Holiday Inn Downtown starting at 5:00 p.m. this Sunday. HSUS asks that those who wish to attend RSVP through the HSUS web site.
AUDIO: Wayne Pacelle (10 min MP3)
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HSUS speaks on behalf of the meat buying public. Farmers that continue to reject consumer opinion will be left in Kevin Fulton’s dust. Fulton Farms is organic, sustainable and humane.
The customer is always right but animal agriculture thinks they are above that old adage.
Every farm organization, every serious producer, certainly every ag reporter and blogger ought to be at this meeting.
You WON’T learn what HSUS wants or even how CEO Pacelle thinks: You only learn those things by watching what his organization does. But you WILL learn how reasonable and mainstream he sounds when he’s selling HSUS snake oil. “Ending animal cruelty,” “letting animals express natural behaviors,” “reducing environmental impact” — aren’t these things we all support? And one restrictive new law at a time, they’ll sound just as good to unprepared legislators or — should HSUS decide that a ballot initiative would work better for your state — urban and suburban voters.
Commercial breeding of dogs is a major industry in Missouri. Sold as “ending ‘puppy mill’ cruelty,” Prop. B got only about 35% of the rural vote — close to 100 counties — on the Nov. 2 ballot. But 11 densely populated counties on the east and west ends of the state said “yes” by around 70%: When this new law becomes effective next year it will be illegal to breed dogs at a large enough scale to support a family.
HSUS is the flagship of the animal rights flotilla. Most of these people DO NOT say “we hate farming (dog breeding, hunting, using animals in medical research, zoos …)” What they say is “We just want to make things better.” And in state after state, they use lies and emotion based on “make things better” to overpower the lawmaking process. THEN — when they have the new law — they tell you what it means.
California decided (Prop. 2, 2008) that laying hens should have enough space to stretch and move around a bit. The vaguely worded proposition passed by a lopsided margin. The state’s egg farmers then passed a law saying that imported eggs had to be produced according to the same standards. One or two producers thought they’d get ahead of the curve and built brand new state-of-the-art facilities with double the per-hen space. THEN HSUS said “By the way, ‘enough space’ means ‘cage free.’
The details of what the new laws mean will be settled in the courts. Nobody actually knows if hens are happier with more space or if the the eggs can be kept as clean. The only things that are certain are that after 2014 producers will build new farms and Californians will pay a lot more for eggs.
Those who can should GO TO THIS MEETING. And LISTEN. And THINK. Take your local lawmaker if you can! And by all means, talk to neighbors, suppliers, friends, and family. The war on animal use in America isn’t going away until we make it go away, and it will take years of work to get there.
My own background is in the hobby breeding of dogs, in Virginia. I’m an official lover of meat, eggs, and milk and I trust farmers to know how they should best be produced. But from what I’ve seen in the HSUS anti-pet campaigns, you’ll only keep the power to make your own decisions if you get informed, organized, and active, NOW.