And you don’t have to take the reporter’s word for it, either. A former director of the Humane Society of Dickson County (local humane societies are not affiliated with HSUS, despite a common misconception) notes the frustration of many sheltering professionals: “In terms of actual cash coming down to the local shelters [from HSUS]…There is none.”

Indeed, the report notes that HSUS’s tax records show that HSUS gave only $1,000 of its $133 million budget to support sheltering in the entire state of Tennessee. Neighboring Kentucky pet shelters received nothing. We did our own analysis and found the percentage of HSUS’s budget given to support sheltering in each state; Kentucky wasn’t the only zero-point-zero.

And even fans of HSUS’s well-produced tear-jerking television commercials acknowledge that they’re just a bit deceptive. An animal control official admitted, “I love the commercials” but also noted, “It gives me more of the impression that they’re helping on a locally communal base.” It’s no surprise then that our research has shown that even self-described HSUS donors are confused about what HSUS actually does.

So if HSUS isn’t funding local pet shelters, what is it doing? Well, HSUS hired a Food Policy Director who ran a campaign comparing chickens to Holocaust victims when he worked for his previous employer, PETA. And HSUS hires lobbyists and lawyers to harass farmers and ban farming practices that the American Veterinary Medical Association finds provide for animal welfare, which inspired our “honest” HSUS ad. Those lawyers are also busy defending  HSUS against a federal racketeering suit.

For the full story on America’s largest, best-funded, and most misunderstood animal liberation group, head on over to our HumaneWatch.org project.

And if you’re an animal shelter trying to kill fewer pets, PETA will try to shame you into killing more. No, seriously — PETA sent activists to shoot undercover videos of shelters in New York State to make the case for more shelter pet killing. PETA is very efficient at shelter pet killing — those state records show that last year, PETA killed nearly 90 percent of the pets in its care. And PETA employees killed pets that court records in a North Carolina trial showed that they called “adorable” and “perfect.”

PETA’s stance isn’t new: PETA wrote to a Florida newspaper that reducing shelter killing was foolish and only a “no-birth” pet community was acceptable. PETA argued feverishly against a proposed ordinance in its hometown of Norfolk, Virginia that would reduce euthanasia at the city pound.

So why might PETA be so vested in pet killing? The world’s most ridiculous animal liberation organization claims mercy as its motive, but there’s plenty of evidence that that’s simply a cover story. In addition to the North Carolina evidence, a recent report from Britain suggests that there is dissent within PETA over the puppy-killing program’s appropriateness. Also, other supposedly “death’s door” pets picked up in PETA’s backyard but sent to other shelters are living and thriving, no thanks to PETA’s syringe.

But to PETA, animals living and thriving in human care might actually be a fate worse than death. An attorney representing PETA argued as much in open court about elephants being brought to zoos. PETA President Ingrid Newkirk has said that in her vegan utopia pets “would be phased out.” Whether it is PETA’s intent or not, PETA’s animal shelter is keeping up its part of that desired phase-out.

The dog was lucky for another reason, too. Portsmouth sits across the Elizabeth River from Norfolk, home of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ shelter of horrors, where last year the group killed nearly 90 percent of the pets in the group’s care. If circumstances were different, Hope might have needed to abandon all hope.

PETA defends this wanton slaughter of pets by protesting that they are compassionate. Ingrid Newkirk, PETA’s president, argues thusly:

We run a shelter but in the most merciful way. We help–because no one else will–the animals who are society’s rejects in the area near our Virginia headquarters. These animals are aggressive, feral, on death’s door (often with large tumors hanging from their bodies), or otherwise unadoptable.

While there is plenty of evidence that disputes the “death’s door” claim by Newkirk, it stands to reason that Hope, having been found so emaciated that trained dog wardens thought her dead, would not have any hope in PETA’s shelter. Perhaps they should call the recovering dog “Lucky,” since she not only survived a delinquent former owner but avoided being the recently killed subject of a PETA self-defending “but we only kill desperate animals” blog post.

As for “aggressive” dogs, what about the animals seized as part of the Michael Vick dogfighting case in Surry — again, not far from PETA’s HQ? Many of the animals were rehabilitated through hard work and have new homes. They may well have been put down if they had been given to PETA.

So if PETA isn’t saving these pets with its $30 million annual budget, what is the animal liberation group that hasn’t seen a press event it didn’t like up to? Buying drones. No, seriously: U.S. News reports that PETA will “‘soon have some impressive new weapons at its disposal […]’ and that it is ‘shopping for one or more drone aircraft.’” The drones would be used by PETA to “stalk” hunters. Even though the group denies that it wants to arm its new, expensive spy toys, given PETA’s history of supporting violent extremists the rhetoric about “weapons” is chilling. But this all may be pointless, because if armed hunters don’t like drones…

So, donors have a choice: Rehabilitate sick dogs by donating to their local shelters, or help a multimillion dollar national group buy drones, while it kills pets in the name of mercy. Sounds like an easy choice to us.

In America, we all know the customer is king. But what if that customer not only wants to be king, but emperor, too? Imagine you have a customer who badmouths your business to the media, complains that you don’t have the right products and thinks he knows better than you how to run your business. You’d be annoyed at such brazen arrogance, to put it mildly.

Pork farmers were similarly outraged (I’ve spoken to them) upon reading a recent guest column on these pages by Fedele Bauccio, CEO of Bon Appetit Management Co. (“Pork Growers: Don’t Ignore Customers,” April 2).

The issue at hand is that food companies are under pressure from animal liberation activists who are making demands of their pork suppliers. The current activist demand is for food retailers to buy pork only from farms that don’t house pregnant pigs in maternity pens.

What’s the deal with maternity pens? The American Veterinary Medical Association and the American Association of Swine Veterinarians both find that the pens provide for animal welfare. As hog farmers will tell you, pregnant pigs tend to fight for food and dominance if housed in groups, leading to nasty injuries. Research has found that stress levels are lower in individually housed pigs, and individual maternity pens allow for individual care and feeding. Hundreds of large-animal vets and swine experts recently signed an open letter in support of maternity pens.

Bauccio, however, who is not a farmer, a veterinarian or an academic with published research, disagrees. He is the customer who knows better.

Why do animal liberation groups claim maternity pens are inhumane, despite the wealth of experts who say otherwise? They’re vegan activists. They will never buy a pork chop or BLT even if the mother pigs were given a daily massage, a Jacuzzi and a flat-screen TV. They want to drive up costs by requiring farmers to build new housing — costs that will put small farmers out of business.

Pork farmers would tell them to get lost. But no food company wants to be the target of a bunch of anti-meat wing nuts with too much time on their hands. The easy way for restaurants and other food providers is to make a weak public statement encouraging their pork suppliers to make changes. Bauccio has gone a step further by speaking as if he is a wholly owned subsidiary of PETA.

What’s resulted is a deceptive PR campaign that seeks to scam consumers by providing only one side of the story. Here’s the other side: Maternity pens are humane and are the predominant option for housing pregnant pigs.

But consumers are becoming aware and wary of false humane claims.

According to recent polling by Opinion Research Corp., when told that pig maternity pens have the backing of farmers and veterinarians, 62 percent of consumers are in favor of maternity pens and only 13 percent are against them.

Here’s the bottom line: The animal rights activists have never run a pork farm. Their announced goal is to put animal agriculture out of business, and they have hoodwinked a handful of CEOs. Meanwhile, farmers and veterinarians who live with and care for their animals every day think otherwise.

The complaints from the Humane Society of the United States (not affiliated with any Kentucky humane societies) about the state Board of Agriculture’s standards on animal care have no credibility (“Agriculture board approves livestock care standards despite objections,” March 27).

Not only does HSUS have zero livestock veterinarians on its executive staff, but it has an ulterior agenda to end animal agriculture completely.

HSUS’s food policy director, a former PETA activist, has wildly compared using farm animals for food to the Nazi Holocaust. Its vice president for farm animal issues has said that “eating meat causes animal cruelty,” and its CEO is an avowed vegan who is not only against livestock farming and hunting but has even said “I don’t want to see another cat or dog born.”

Unfortunately, most Americans think HSUS is affiliated with local pet shelters, according to public polling.

Kentuckians who don’t want to support a radical animal liberation agenda should be sure that their charitable donations go to local animal groups, not HSUS.

But the animal liberationists at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) shouldn’t put down the puppy-killing needles to celebrate the “vegan nation” yet. Economic stresses, namely the ongoing long stagnation and the drought that killed much of the nation’s feed-stock, are responsible for much of the decline in meat consumption. If those pressures lift, expect Americans to resume normal, meaty dinner service.

It’s clear that even if we’re eating a little less meat, Americans aren’t falling in line with Humane Society of the United States Food Policy Director and ex-PETA flack Matt Prescott’s repulsive view farmers are running concentration camps. Meat is more expensive and consumers have less money, so they’re scrimping and saving. At the same time, cheese consumption is nearing record highs. Certainly, if people want to be vegetarian it’s their free choice, but it doesn’t look like the PETA/HSUS lifestyle is calling the masses to the vegan sliver of society.

Now, the judge has ruled that “this case was groundless and unreasonable from its inception” and the animal rights plaintiffs must pay Feld’s legal fees. And while the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) — which was deeply tied to the animal liberationist side of the case — wasn’t held liable, the judge left open the question of whether the nation’s richest animal liberation group might find itself on the hook at a later date should Feld choose to re-argue that portion of its case. (One of the original plaintiffs that may have to pay up as a result of this finding, the Fund for Animals, was absorbed into the HSUS corporate empire during the case.)

And lest you forget, there’s still a second lawsuit before Sullivan. In this one the tables are turned: Feld is suing HSUS and others alleging they engaged in a racketeering conspiracy in violation of federal RICO law. A different animal rights group, the ASPCA, perhaps saw which way the legal winds were blowing in that case and paid Feld almost $10 million in December to settle both cases.

The editors of The Wall Street Journal praised Judge Sullivan’s decision to award legal fees to Feld, and they took HSUS boss Wayne Pacelle to task for his petulant hectoring of Feld’s defense of its business. The editors write:

The animal-rights crowd responded with letters to the editor suggesting that the lawsuit had been a splendid, public-spirited affair. Humane Society of the United States President and CEO Wayne Pacelle wrote that Feld was a “disgruntled corporation” trying to “silence its critics” because it has filed a “grudge suit” of its own. Mr. Pacelle is upset that plaintiffs have been nailed for abusing the courts to harass a law-abiding company.

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.

Yet the number you [PETA] put down, in one small area of the United States, is one third of the number that animal organisations put down in the entire UK last year.

In reply, Newkirk let loose the typical dubious defense that all the animals PETA kills are already basically on death’s door, but the reporter notes this interesting tidbit:

When things have calmed down a bit [Newkirk] admits that even within the organization not everyone agrees with her [about pet killing].

Apparently all the killing of “adorable” and “perfect” animals —these characterizations by PETA employees are from evidence in a North Carolina trial — has dissidents within PETA wondering if PETA’s definition of “total animal liberation” really means liberation from life itself. Obviously it’s hypocritical for the world’s most notorious animal liberation group — we must quibble with the article’s claim that PETA is “largest,” since other animal liberation groups with starkly similar ideologies like the Humane Society of the United States are larger — to kill the overwhelming majority of the dogs and cats in its care.

But there is a more sinister truth: It kind of isn’t hypocritical to get rid of pets when you’re an animal liberationist. PETA’s ideology is so radical that even pets must be “liberated,” and PETA’s record shows that the group’s utopia is pet-free:

• PETA’s pet body count, now nearing 30,000 reported to the Commonwealth of Virginia;
• PETA officials called for a Florida town to become a “no-birth” community and put pets on the path of the dodo;
• Newkirk once said, “It would be lovely if we stopped this whole notion of pets altogether”;
• PETA balked at a project to reduce and eliminate pet euthanasia at its hometown’s city pound; and
• PETA objected to a pilot program to help homeless pets and homeless people rehabilitate each other in San Francisco.

• Our objections to the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s (CSPI) report attacking restaurants for their kids’ meal offerings received wide coverage. The Los Angeles Times and CNN.com both reported our criticism of CSPI’s “blame game,” as did numerous local NBC affiliates.
• The Daily Mail reports that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (PETA) campaign to propagandize children may have recently crossed another line, as if trying to cram its animal liberation ideology into school curriculums, to “traumatize” children with graphic displays, and featuring convicted arsonists in its former kids’ magazine weren’t enough. When a 14 year-old Louisiana boy offered a cow in a raffle to go on a school trip to Ireland and the United Kingdom, PETA responded by sending the kid images of the group’s “lettuce ladies” that the boy’s father characterized as “wildly inappropriate.” Supporters of PETA’s animal liberation agenda went further and reportedly bullied the kid online, including sending hopes that the raffle winner would choke to death. You can read our report on PETA’s child-propaganda campaign from a few years back for more information on how PETA tries to manipulate impressionable kids.
• Are people beginning to realize that the “public health” community—which we have criticized for its habit of expanding its control from public concerns beyond citizens’ individual responsibility to private habits that are individuals’ choices—has the wrong model for dealing with obesity? A recent article in Breakthrough that received favorable coverage at The Week and The Daily Beast suggests that the commentariat is beginning to ask serious questions of the CSPI/Kelly Brownell/Michael Bloomberg blame-food-first axis. The author proposes that by drawing the wrong lessons from past crusades and blaming food corporations alone for obesity, the anti-obesity movement doomed itself for failure. Read the whole thing.
• CCF in the News: After a Daily Mail report on PETA’s animal-killing hypocrisy, we appeared on the Mark Levin radio show to warn the conservative dog-lover’s listeners that the animal liberation group kills nearly 90 percent of the dogs and cats in its care. The truth about PETA was also reported on PETA’s hometown NBC affiliate and at Yahoo! News.

The article even claims that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the American Association of Pediatrics endorse veganism for kids. They don’t — they actually say a vegan diet can work if properly planned — and they refrain from endorsing it for very good reason. Without Vitamin B12, found almost exclusively in foods of animal origin, kids can suffer severe nutrient deficiencies. In some cases, nutrient deficiencies in vegan-raised kids were reportedly fatal.

The article’s errors go on. The reporter attempts to cite polling by the Vegetarian Resource Group (VRG) — an advocacy organization for vegetarian eating — as evidence that more kids are turning vegan. However, the article doesn’t get the numbers right. While the paper states that 3 percent of kids in a 2010 survey were vegan, VRG’s website states the actual number was 2 percent. Additionally, the paper claimed that in a 2012 survey, VRG found that 5 percent of U.S. adults were vegan. Not true: VRG’s website says the true value was 1 percent.

And, in a lesson from 4^th grade geometry, you have no evidence of a trend in kids without two data points. So the claim of “growing popularity” is simply asserted without evidence — the lame attempt at justifying it is quoting a VRG spokesman who says he “suspects” there’s a higher number of vegan kids.

Putting aside the errors, let’s remember that we’re still talking about 1 or 2 percent of the population being vegan. Whoop-tee-doo.  We see stories all the time about celebs who “went veg” giving it up and going back into the meaty fold. (In recent weeks, Ozzy Osbourne and R&B singer Ne-Yo have rejoined the 99 percent after a vegan experiment.) Maybe the real question should be, after all the years of propaganda from PETA, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), and other vegan animal liberation activists, has the public concluded that it just doesn’t agree?