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Ohio Pork defends agreement with HSUS
Calling it “an agreement we can live with”, a spokesman for the Ohio Pork Producers Association defends the livestock industry’s decision to compromise with the Humane Society of the United States.
“We’re excited about this agreement,” says Jamie Banbury, director of communications for Ohio Pork. “It allows the pork industry to remain viable in the state of Ohio. And given that Ohio agriculture is constantly changing—and animal agriculture, in general—our farmers will find new and even better ways to do things—and we find that’s the same with animal housing. So we’ll move forward with this.”
The agreement calls for a ban on the installation of new gestation crates for sows by the end of this year, and a ban on all gestation crates by January 1st of 2026. Banbury says some farmers have already started to make that transition.
“Some of our farmers have gone to the open—the pen housing,” Banbury says, “and HSUS and Ohio agriculture will join together to do some research—fund some science-based research—that will even further evaluate animal care standards and what the best approach to those will be.”
And to those who say that Ohio’s livestock industry caved into the pressure from HSUS?
“I think the agreement is fair and we can avoid a campaign where we would have put a lot of money into an uncertain result,” says Banbury. “So I think we can look at this as an agreement we can live with and will move forward from here.”
HSUS claimed it had collected enough signatures to put an animal rights initiative on the Ohio ballot this fall. That initiative called for much more stringent animal welfare rules than those included in the agreement.
Banbury says the leaders of Ohio’s ag and livestock organizations were unanimous in their acceptance of the agreement.
AUDIO: Jamie Banbury (5 min MP3)
Tags: Animal Rights, animal welfare, HSUS, Livestock, Ohio
HSUS brings has nothing to lose and they bring nothing to the table. All you have done is postponed the inevitable. HSUS’s goal is the end of ALL animal use. Period. Remember, they do this incrementally. And to think that the Ohio Livestock Coalition threw another animal group (Ohio dog breeders) into the den of wolves (HSUS) is unforgiveable. ALL animal breeders/owners are the targets of the animal rights industry. Instead of throwing one group or another under the bus, ALL of those who actually produce food or who produce animals, or who use animals in research, rodeos, circuses, zoos should be working together against this insanity of the animal rights extremist groups like HSUS and PETA.