Jean Barton: The trickery of animal welfare groups (HSUS is a con)

Red Bluff Daily News ^ | February 13, 2010 | Jean Barton

[jazusamo]

We arrived in San Antonio on Monday, and like many other cattlemen and women, we paid our respects to The Alamo on a sunny warm afternoon. Docents did a great job telling the story of the brave men, both inside and out doors.

I attended the American National CattleWomen Animal Welfare Committee and very glad I did. When I returned home I was shocked to see ads on our local Redding TV station for HSUS (Humane Society of the United States) where "for only $ 19 a month you can help save the animals."

Cattlemen and CattleWomen alike need to realize the seriousness of this matter. HSUS wants to get rid of animal agriculture and the goal of ANCW's Animal Welfare Committee is to assist the animal industry in responding to animal rights activists and become pro-active in spreading factual information about the care our animals do receive.

The majority of consumers like meat and want to eat meat, but fear it is becoming politically incorrect to do so. We need to give them permission to eat meat. And let them know they are not doing wrong by consuming our healthy and humanely-treated product.

Only a very small percentage of the public are animal activists. No matter what we say or do, they will likely not change their views. What is best is that we ignore them and focus our efforts elsewhere, as confronting them it is a no-win situation.

What we need to do is show the public how we care for animals. We need to be completely transparent in how we produce and care for our product by showing consumers the cow-calf production stage, stocker operations, the feedlot phase and even the harvest or slaughter process.

How do we give the rest of the public confidence that eating animal protein is right? They need to see it all, understand that from conception to their dinner plate we give these animals the utmost care and compassion.

Food safety is not an option but a standard that we set higher than anywhere else in the world. Yes, we grow beef to harvest for food consumption - and we do it better, safer and more humanely than anywhere in the world.

The problem is the animal activist companies have turned meat production into an emotional issue - never mind sound science. They have humanized all animals. So some consumers believe eating meat is like eating your pet.

Most Americans are two to four generations removed from the farm - the only way the public can relate to animals is through their pets - not the cattle and pigs that were raised to be eaten on their great-grandfather's farm. They truly think steaks come from the back room of the grocery store.

Update on the Animal Welfare Committee.

The committee has organized into a committee that includes state team members. The committee will meet at annual and summer conferences. The state team members do not need to attend the national meetings but should attend their regional meetings. It is the state team members' job to implement the committee's activity at the state level and be the local liaison for their state schools participating in the College Aggies Online Program.

College Aggies Online is a joint venture of the Animal Agriculture Alliance, Arlington, Va., and American National CattleWomen, Inc., Englewood, Colo., that connects college students from across the country who are interested in promoting agriculture. Participants receive training and instructions from industry professionals and enjoy access to a private forum to post information about current and emerging issues facing farmers and ranchers.

As of Jan. 15, over 300 college students are participating in the College Aggies Online Program in over colleges and universities. Fewer than 10 teachers have been adopted to date. It is educational programs like these that must be participated in inorder to help our consumers understand fact from fiction.

The strong front we are up against is significant in financial stature. HSUS has full -time state directors in more than 30 states. They are a 401(c)4 non-profit corporation which allows it to lobby and campaign under the banner of social welfare.

The Center for Consumer Freedom shared numbers from HSUS's 2008 Tax Return. Just to show what we are up against, HSUS had an income of $86,727,035 with net assets in 2008 totalling $162,217, 144.

What is even more telling about their goals are their 2008 expenditures: They spent almost $20 million on campaigns, legislation and litigation; more than $ 24 million on fundraising; over $30.9 million in salaries, wages and other employee compensation; and less than $500,000 - that's just one-half of 1 percent of its total budget - in grants to organizations providing hands-on care to dogs and cats, which is where most donors probably believe their donations are going.

By agriculturists working together to protect and promote the beef industry, we can conquer even the largest and strongest groups. For more information on ANCW's Animal Welfare Committee or the Aggies Online Program, visit www.ancw.org.

Recently Yellow Tail Wine of Australia pledged $100,000 to HSUS, the nation's largest anti-hunting organization. Alerted to this relationship, the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance (USSA) immediately contacted the American distributor of the wine, and urged them to ask Yellow Tail to sever its relationship with HSUS.

"This winemaker has fallen into the same trap as other companies who donate money to HSUS," said Bud Pidgeon, president of the USSA. "They believe they are helping animals in shelter when in fact they are funding an agenda from an animal rights group that is largely divergent from the vast majority of Americans."

Jolley wrote on Cattlenetwork: Feb. 6, "Well, the whole thing went viral in a way they never expected. The ag community, long a target of HSUS, was immediately up in arms. Good red wines, after all, are best enjoyed with a good steak, not a marinated and grilled piece of tofu. Hundreds of people in the ag community or closely affiliated with it, went to Yellow Tail's Facebook page and becoming fans of the company. They became fans, not to pat them on the back but to kick them a little lower down their anatomy. Within 24 hours hundreds of people had used their fan status to ask YT what the hell they were thinking. I spent an hour browsing through the comments. They have two Facebook pages, by the way, with 2,442 people on one and 1,657 on the other."

If you want to help the animals, please donate to our local animal rescue or humane societies.

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Jean Barton has been writing her column in the Red Bluff Daily News since the early 1990s. She can be reached by e-mail at jbarton@theskybeam.com. Her column appears on Saturdays on the Farm Page.

[jazusamo]

HSUS Ping!

[Secret Agent Man]

HSUS is a con.

Your local animal shelter/rescue, or independent rescue groups, are generally not. These are the places that take in, rehab, care for, and adopt out animals as best they can.

HSUS has too many connections to PETA, quite frankly. And PETA is the biggest con of all. Killing well over 95% of perfectly healthy and adoptable animals that people turn over to them.

[jazusamo]

Your local animal shelter/rescue, or independent rescue groups, are generally not.

Exactly right, and they are not connected to HSUS. The last line of her article asks that people donate to local animal rescue or humane societies, she should have started the article with that.

HSUS tries to imply they do much for pets in their advertising. Their latest TV ad that she refers to in this article is pathetic, they appeal to peoples emotions for donations.

[Flycatcher]

Recently Yellow Tail Wine of Australia pledged $100,000 to HSUS,

I drink wine. No more Yellow Tail for me.

Thanks for the ping!

[Secret Agent Man]

Some of the animal shelters and groups ARE connected to HSUS. Some use some of their materials and some advocate certain issues the HSUS pushes for.

[jazusamo]

Thanks, that must be the ones the 1/2 of 1% go to.

[I still care]

“Most Americans are two to four generations removed from the farm - the only way the public can relate to animals is through their pets - not the cattle and pigs that were raised to be eaten on their great-grandfather’s farm.”

Herein lies much of the problem.

I’ve had family members who had farms. The animals are just that. Animals. They are not sweet little Bambis that love you. They tear each others tails off, bite, scratch, and if not for their human caretakers would be infested with diseases and bugs, and not care too much about it.

And it’s worse in the wild, so I don’t have too much space for people who complain it’s because people force them to live that way. As with all common sense things, we’d all like our food to be treated as well as practicably possible.

But while it’s proper to treat your animals well and have regard for them, your farm pig is not your little Mittens snuggling up to you and playing with her little toys.

[jazusamo]

Well said...Sadly, probably the majority of people born and raised in most of the big cities and their suburbs in the last 30 or so years don’t know a thing about animals other than dogs and cats or animals they’ve seen in a zoo.

Farms and ranches have disappeared from nearby these areas and hunting as a sport as well as putting food on the table has become less and less popular.

HSUS, PETA and other animals rights organizations take full advantage of this lack of knowledge to rip off the public with their scams.

[redhead]

I love YT. It is going to be hard to give it up, but I will if I have to. We should be putting pressure on them to detach themselves from HSUS and PETA. Oh, well...there’s always Barefoot.

[Flycatcher]

Yeah, It's a shame. They make a very good shiraz.

But I won't patronize any company that supports HSUS.

Bottoms up!

[ottbmare]

HSUS is an ally of PETA, and its president, Wayne Pacelle, advocates a petless, meatless society. They fight against hunting rights in every state and lobby heavily to acquire the right to go onto private property and inspect the conditions under which any animal is kept. Do we need protection for animals? You bet—and we have laws right now to protect them. This group is totalitarian, aggressive, and dangerous to all of us who love our animals and want to keep them. Or even to those who don’t love animals but want to eat them.

[kanawa]

RDO Woof

[girlangler]

Thanks for the pings.

[brytlea]

Yellowtail stepped into a big pile of something, and I’m sure they never intended to. The dog show folks were all over them on FB too. I felt a little sorry for them, but they should fully vet organizations before they donate to them.

[jazusamo]

Yep, they didn't check them out well enough. An article in The NY Post this morning says they're still going to donate the money but have designated it to go to HSUS' Animal Rescue Team but that's not going to satisfy many people.

Hunters, lay off the Yellow Tail

[brytlea]

Of course it won’t since that will free up a like amount of money to go into their other activities.

[jazusamo]

Exactly.

[SunkenCiv]

HSUS (Humane Society of the United States)... wants to get rid of animal agriculture... The strong front we are up against is significant in financial stature. HSUS has full -time state directors in more than 30 states. They are a 401(c)4 non-profit corporation which allows it to lobby and campaign under the banner of social welfare. The Center for Consumer Freedom shared numbers from HSUS's 2008 Tax Return. Just to show what we are up against, HSUS had an income of $86,727,035 with net assets in 2008 totalling $162,217,144.

IOW, number one priority is getting HSUS removed from orgs like the United Way, and get its non-profit status revoked, and maybe prosecuted under the RICO Act.

[JLLH]

I had heard this. I do believe that, like in government, local organizations are the way to go. Easier to see where the $$ is going.