That perception could hardly be further from the truth, but it’s not surprising given HSUS’s advertising, which relies heavily on dogs and cats. We conducted a review that showed that 85 percent of the animals in HSUS TV commercials were in fact cats and dogs. That’s definitely deceptive when one considers that less than one percent of HSUS’s $130 million budget is shared with local animal shelters. That got us thinking: What do HSUS’s donors think of HSUS’s misleading appeals?

Now we know. We conducted an online poll of self-described HSUS donors and found that 90 percent didn’t know how little of their gifts HSUS gives to local pet shelters. Armed with the truth, 80 percent agreed that HSUS “misleads people into thinking that it supports local humane societies and pet shelters.”

That shouldn’t be surprising. Before telling the surveyed donors how little HSUS gives to local pet shelters, we asked their primary reason for giving to HSUS. The vast majority donated to help shelter pets: 40 percent said they gave to “help HSUS care for homeless dogs and cats in animal shelters and humane societies” while another 36 percent gave to “reduce the number of animals put down in shelters each year.” They aren’t the first pet-loving HSUS donors to be shocked by the truth.

And there’s a whole lot more truth to share with HSUS donors. When HSUS isn’t factory fundraising, stockpiling pension funds, or propagandizing children, it’s lobbying to take meat, dairy, and eggs off the table, just like PETA. We have to wonder what these HSUS donors think about their doggie dollars going to a radical animal rights agenda. And we know an easy way to find out.

To alleviate public confusion, HumaneWatch.org launched a new online video, “HSUS: Lawyers in Cages,” which parodies the deceptive fundraising practices of HSUS. HSUS’s advertisement featuring actress Wendie Malick employs images of downtrodden cats and dogs to pull at the heartstrings and wallets of America’s pet lovers.

“The Humane Society of the United States intentionally uses manipulative ads to raise money on the backs of abandoned and abused dogs and cats, yet it gives just one penny of each dollar it raises to local pet shelters,” said CCF Senior Research Analyst J. Justin Wilson. “While the video is tongue in cheek,HumaneWatch.org wants to ensure that America’s pet lovers know full well just what their donations are funding: a PETA-like agenda, not pet shelters.”

After learning that the HSUS did not spend a majority of its funds assisting local hands-on pet shelters, 80 percent of HSUS donors polled believed the group engaged in deceptive fundraising practices, with nearly 50 percent reporting they are now less likely to support the group.

“Think of how many more abandoned and abused pets could be saved if HSUS donors knew to give to their local shelter directly,” Wilson continued. “HSUS actively participates in duplicitous fundraising practices, using its classic bait-and-switch manipulation—reeling people in with pictures of sad-looking puppies and kitties, while funneling their donations to a radical animal rights philosophy.”

For a copy of the complete poll, visit HumaneWatch.org.

The group intends to petition the White House to forbid pictures of the Obamas or other members of the President’s staff eating what PCRM calls “carcinogenic or obesogenic foods.” Meanwhile, media outlets are eating PCRM’s press releases up. More and more, it seems PCRM is adopting the “press slut” philosophy of its comrades at PETA.

What are these evil foods anyway? Given PCRM’s track record, they are any foods with animal products. Whether it is bashing heart-healthy fish, lean chicken, or even milk, PCRM is no stranger to employing junk science to scare Americans to cut animal protein from their diets. The group has ludicrously compared bacon to cigarettes and its president has claimed that giving a kid cheese amounts to child abuse. “Cherry-picking data, a common PCRM practice, does not mesh with the scientific method,” writes McGill University’s Joe Schwarcz.

Why does PCRM push so hard against animal-based foods? Because PCRM is deeply involved in the animal rights movement. PCRM’s president was once a scientific adviser to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and head of the Foundation to Support Animal Protection (a.k.a. the PETA Foundation). PCRM and its affiliated groups get much of their money from a wealthy animal rights activist, and PCRM has received substantial grants from PETA in the past.

That track record drew the justified skepticism of the Los Angeles Times’ health blogger, who noted the real reason PCRM is pushing this petition: PCRM just wants free press to push veganism. What’s the matter, guys, did you have to cut your billboard budget?

The New York Times

So, with the self-respecting omnivores smelling a vegetarian rat, the “defense of meat” was left to—drum roll, please—Ingrid Newkirk of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, among others, who said she’d only eat meat grown in a petri dish. (Don’t call it pink slime.) She didn’t say whether she’d retract comparing humanity to a “cancer” or whether she regretted funding arsonists, but perhaps the Times will have other essay contests yet.

Of course, what the Times called “a powerful ethical critique” of omnivorous eating could better be called “nonsense.” The Times’ vegetarian public editor conceded that the essays were “pretty narrow” and acknowledged criticism from a former Stanford professor who reminded the urban elite that Inuit and grassland nomadic peoples need to eat meat to survive. And more simply, who really believes that animals are humanity’s equal? Certainly not the indigenous Americans who killed and ate them. Even PETA doesn’t seem to buy that line.

Not to mention that those “cruelty-free” vegetables come from farms from which a myriad of insects and invasive rodents have been driven out or killed. (That goes for the “organic” farms, too.) And some writers now suggest that plants can even “talk” or “howl.”

So, vegans, what separates “talking peas” from “food with a face”? We find this a very powerful critique, at least if you don’t think humans are “the biggest blight on the face of the earth.”

One writer over at The New York Times thinks that peas might soon join pork in that classification. Apparently, research suggests that pea plants can send chemical signals to other pea plants indicating drought. Based on this plus some philosophical contortions, the writer suggests that it’s okay to eat perennial plants, but possibly not annuals (plants that last one growing season):

The “renewable” aspects of perennial plants may be accepted by humans as a gift of vegetal being and integrated into their diets. But it would be harder to justify the cultivation of peas and other annual plants, the entire being of which humans devote to externally imposed ends.

Of course, if one can’t justify that, mustn’t one cut from human consumption essentially all corn, wheat, and rice? Or in other words, mustn’t one abstain from foods which are the staple foods of a majority of humankind? (The writer retreats from this seemingly obvious logical chasm and makes no absolute claims.)

Animal rights activists have always been a few steps removed from reality when it comes to promoting a “kind” diet, in the words of masticator extraordinaire Alicia Silverstone. As a Yale University graduate student notes, the “production of vegetables is as brutal as any feedlot” as wild animals and pesky insects are killed by the millions and billions to prevent crop harm. There’s even some evidence that an omnivorous diet based on beef kills fewer animals than a vegetarian one.

This may seem like esoteric silliness, but consider that elevating humans above animals (in other words, acknowledging reality) is called “speciesism” by animal rights activists in the hopes that eating jellyfish or insect-derived red food dye will be equated with genocide. For now, radical authors may be content to say that “Vegan Is Love” and that merely abstaining from meat, fish, and dairy is good. But by vegans’ own logic, how far behind can “Starvation Is Love” be?

This weekend saw the celebration of Earth Day, which comes with its own share of diet myths, endorsed by PETA and HSUS. Supposedly animal agriculture contributes more greenhouse emissions than driving, but as our Executive Director told The Daily Caller, that’s based on a sloppy comparison and third-world standards:

If that sounds a little too incredible, that’s because it is: The report’s own co-author later admitted that it uses flawed, apples-and-oranges comparisons in its calculations. Essentially, the report uses a more sweeping accounting for agriculture than it does for other sectors of life.

A much more reliable measure comes from the Environmental Protection Agency, which calculates that all agriculture accounts for less than 7 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Animal agriculture accounts for just 4 percent.

“Organic” green food myths are even more nonsensical. “Organic” methods can’t feed the world and even trying to use them on a mass scale would put an unbelievable strain on the natural world. We continued:

If we did things purely by “organic” means and rejected synthetic methods, we could only support a world population of about 4 billion people. And if you think needing an additional 1.5 million cows to replace “pink slime” sounds like a lot, we’d require 1 billion more livestock for just the U.S. to replace synthetic nitrogen (plus 2 billion acres to plant feed crops for these animals).

No surprise then that British organic movement leader Peter Melchett once said that “Science doesn’t tell us the answers.”

Our Senior Research Analyst also advised Floridians that PETA’s shocking proposal to turn the Treasure Coast into a “no-birth community” for dogs and cats is very much in character. He noted that PETA’s apparent view that “killing is kindness [… is] a strange view of ethics.”

Meanwhile, our HSUS advertising parody video “Lawyers in Cages” has been making the rounds on the internet, drawing tens of thousands of views in a few days. HSUS’s fundraising films might show abused dogs and cats, but most donation money tends to end up supporting factory fundraisers, anti-farmer lobbyists, and the HSUS pension fund. As for HSUS itself, we’ll quote from our video: “PETA with suits and deodorant.”

That got our video department wondering what an “honest” HSUS ad might look like. Given that HSUS has dozens of lawyers on staff and spends millions of dollars each year lobbying, we felt that people should know what their $19 per month actually funds. (Hint: PETA-like activism.) Watch:

We’ve also published a primer on HSUS entitled “9 Things You Didn’t Know About HSUS” that reminds readers of how HSUS gets poor marks from charity watchdogs, puts more money in its pension fund than it gives to local pet shelters, and has on staff a person who is a former “spokesman” for the FBI-designated “terrorist” group the Animal Liberation Front.

For more in-depth coverage on America’s richest animal-rights group, visit our sister site, HumaneWatch.org.

Why? PETA president Ingrid Newkirk is now insisting that PETA’s latest campaign be included in school curricula. PETA apparently wants your kids to link meat-eating, wearing animal fiber, or exhibiting animals for entertainment with slavery and discrimination. What’s more, this strategy is nothing new. PETA is no stranger to getting its curricula into schools: We exposed some of those efforts (along with PETA’s general child- and youth-propaganda campaign) in our “Your Kids, PETA’s Pawns” report.

Federal courts (for one) may be smarter than to believe PETA’s nonsense, but impressionable children are an easy target. It therefore should be no surprise that PETA’s swanky new Los Angeles office is the site of the launch party for a new illustrated veganism-shilling book that targets kids ages 4 to 10. One dietician worried that “[the book] could easily scare a young child into eating vegan, and, without proper guidance, that child could become malnourished.” That’s not a groundless worry—and scaring kids into veganism may well be the very idea.

That certainly was the apparent modus operandi in PETA’s past child-propaganda campaigns that included literature such as the “Your Mommy Kills Animals” comic or the gory “Unhappy Meals.” This new form of PETA-approved propaganda appears to take a softer tone, which is one reason parents should be doubly sure to see that it doesn’t wind up infecting classrooms and elementary school libraries. After all, parents may already have to deal with the PETA circus at the schoolyard gates.

So, should you swear off poultry to save your bowels? Experts say no. For one, Michael Doyle of the University of Georgia Center for Food Safety notes that “Poop gets into your food […] produce is grown in soil fertilized with manure, and there’s E. coli in that, too.” (We’re waiting for PCRM’s press releases on fecal traces in sprouts and spinach, but not holding our breath.)

Dirk Fillpot of the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) found additional problems with the analysis and report. First, he indicates, “[PCRM’s report] assumes that the presence of generic E. coli could only come from contact with feces, when that is simply not the case.” Catherine Cutter of Pennsylvania State University also said that PCRM couldn’t reasonably identify the cause of increased microbial levels.

But surely the presence of E. coli is worrying, right? Wrong. According to FSIS’s Fillpot, “The E. coli identified in the study is not a type that would make consumers ill.”

Facts—they’re so inconvenient, especially when they get in the way of a PR ploy.

So, in short, rather than finding evidence of widespread harmful contamination of store-bought chicken with toxic feces, PCRM seems to have found some traces of bacteria that federal regulators say won’t make consumers ill that might be linked to chicken feces but might not. We think that sounds like par for the course for the group that absurdly believes giving children dairy products is child abuse and compares bacon to cigarettes.

So it didn’t surprise us that PETA wrote a letter to the editor bashing advocates who oppose killing pets in shelters. What is interesting is PETA’s solution to the pet “problem.” PETA argued that the Treasure Coast area of Florida (a state considering revising its shelter euthanasia regulations) should become a “no-birth” community. Yes, that’s right: PETA apparently wants to put dogs and cats on the path to extinction in that part of Florida. We’ve always enjoyed the quip that “animal rights means no animals left,” but it’s another thing to see the radicals actually advocate that it be put into action.

PETA’s call sounds shocking, but it shouldn’t be. PETA president Ingrid Newkirk has said that in her ideal world “companion animals [pets] would be phased out.” (Is that one reason PETA kills so many—to assist the “phase out”? And has PETA considered that a “no-birth” community means a shortage of furry little poster puppies for animal rights activists?)

Other animal rights activists have expressed equally chilling visions in their vegan utopias for the animals Americans cherish. Wayne Pacelle, the CEO of the Humane Society of the United States (which gives only one percent of its budget to local animal shelters) once said, “I don’t want to see another cat or dog born.” (We’ve always wondered why his cat looks a bit bug-eyed in this photo.)

Animal rights groups might hide their agendas to eliminate meat, dairy, eggs, and all other use of animals behind dogs and cats, but don’t be fooled. “Total animal liberation” means that pets have to be “liberated,” too. We suppose it could be worse: they could end up at PETA’s shelter.