The Director of the IRS division implicated in using the improper targeting, Lois Lerner, is (or at least was) an “active member” of HSUS. In her official capacity, could Lerner have been in position to run interference for HSUS, the nation’s richest anti-agriculture animal liberation group?

That’s a serious charge, but the question is being raised in the media today. In 2011, six U.S. Representatives concerned that HSUS was using its tax status for improper political activities wrote a letter to the IRS Inspector General asking for a thorough investigation of HSUS’s political spending to determine if it fell within allowable levels under federal tax law. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Missouri Republican, wrote a letter to Lerner the year before asking that HSUS’s political spending be scrutinized.

Lerner took no public action. In response, Rep. Luetkemeyer wrote another letter to the Treasury Secretary and the Inspector General for Tax Administration on Friday renewing his call for an investigation of HSUS, in light of Lerner’s connections to the group and her rapidly diminishing credibility. Fox News’s Fox and Friends covered the issue this morning (in a clip you can see below), and we only expect the volume of questions on this matter to grow.

Dr. Oz first used his column in last month’s Success magazine to freak people out about hormones used in meat production. Before debunking the scare, it is worth noting that the not-so-good doctor didn’t even bother to get his facts right. Dr. Oz asserts:

We know that children consuming the most animal products are more likely to enter puberty seven months sooner than the group consuming the least. Scientists mainly attribute this to hormones such as estrogen and testosterone injected into cows, pigs and chickens, meant to increase weight or milk production.

That’s all very interesting, scary-sounding, and wrong. First, it is actually illegal to use hormones in pork and poultry production. Only cattle and sheep may be treated with such hormones, and the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates veterinary drugs, sets toxicology-based limits on hormone supplementation at a level that is expected to cause no effects on people eating meat from those animals. And there’s no conclusive evidence that any food causes early puberty, Oz’s oddly specific declaration to the contrary (we note that he provided no citation or reference for the claim).

Dr. Oz also hosted Bittman on his television program so the Times columnist could plug his new book, Vegan Before 6, which says we shouldn’t eat meat, fish, dairy, or eggs before dinner. We note, for starters, that Bittman has praised effusively eggs—including ones eaten at, er, breakfast—produced in a fashion acceptable to his posh sensibilities.

Inviting the latest non-scientific fad diet shill on the program is one of The Dr. Oz Show’s stocks-in-trade: In the last 6 months, Oz has sat down with a kook who thinks wheat is literally poisonous, an animal liberationist and former PETA Foundation president who thinks that veganism will somehow eliminate Alzheimer’s Disease, and others who push the dubious hypothesis that foods are just tasty crack.

So we’d say that even though he’s a crank, Bittman fits right in on Oz’s program. And as long as Bittman’s ilk find succor from the good doctor, one can expect more and more people to join a group that already includes commentators from The New Yorker and Slate in wondering if the show promotes more pseudoscience than real medicine.

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.

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.

The 1,647 cats and dogs PETA employees killed last year bring the animal rights group’s total body count to 29,398 since 1998. PETA has committed this slaughter despite the fact that the group’s president, Ingrid Newkirk, has claimed that “We could become a no-kill shelter immediately.” The self-described “press sluts” are more interested in lettuce-clad “lobster liberation” and offending Holocaust survivors than finding adoptive homes for the pets in its care. PETA even bought a walk-in freezer to store the bodies. That’s probably not the “forever home” most people would hope for.

What makes it scarier for pet owners is that this highest of hypocrisies isn’t completely out of character for PETA. Newkirk has said that in her ideal world, “companion animals [what the rest of us call “pets”] would be phased out.” A PETA staffer wrote in a Florida newspaper that the community should become “no-birth,” putting puppies and kittens on the path of the dodo bird. And — perhaps desperate not to be shamed by the performance of city dog catchers — PETA stood in the way of an ordinance to reduce pet killing in its hometown.

If you are outraged by PETA’s shameful, lethal behavior, please go to PETAKillsAnimals.com and sign our petition asking the Commonwealth of Virginia to strip the group of its status as an animal shelter.

Surprised? HSUS is a vegan activist organization that doesn’t run a single pet shelter, not your local humane society. It does, however, employ PETA alumni, including the brains behind the disgusting “Holocaust on Your Plate” campaign and a lettuce lady face of “Lobster Liberation.” That’s why we started Humane Watch — a project to get out the facts about HSUS’s radical anti-animal agriculture agenda, awful charity ratings from respected watchdogs, and deceptive advertising.

And many of those finger-snacking football fans might be falling for HSUS’s deception. Recent public polling shows that over 70 percent of Americans mistakenly believe that HSUS is a pet shelter umbrella group — in reality, HSUS gives less than one percent of its budget to local pet shelters. So to help them make informed donation decisions, we will air an ad during the football celebrations warning viewers of HSUS’s deception.

If you happen to see it on Sunday night, feel free to go to our Facebook page and share the clip to tell your friends the facts about HSUS’s deceptive fundraising, vegan agenda, and oft-criticized management practices.

The Waterkeeper Alliance has a knack for filing questionable lawsuits, but one now-dismissed suit in Maryland might be its worst yet. The Waterkeeper Alliance alleged that the Hudson family, fourth-generation poultry farmers, violated environmental law by allowing improper waste runoff into the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The problem was that the facts were not on their side, since the suspected pile of manure wasn’t, in fact, manure.

Already chided by a judge for having a weak case, the Waterkeeper Alliance pressed on to trial. Not surprisingly, it failed miserably. According to the Baltimore Sun:

Meanwhile, the Alliance took a hit in West Virginia as well. It tried to butt into an EPA suit there to go after another family farmer for allegedly violating the Clean Water Act. The theory, again, was that chicken litter was running off into a stream when it rained. But thanks to a favorable Supreme Court ruling for property owners this past spring, the farmers filed suit against the EPA, causing it to back down. It’s not what the Alliance hoped for. Just two weeks ago, Waterkeeper Alliance Executive Director Marc Yaggi said that if the EPA did not win this suit, it would “roll back core Clean Water Act protections that safeguard human health and the environment.”

What’s in RFK Jr.’s stocking this year? Hyperbole and disappointment—which itself is a gift to family farmers across the country.

That’s not so certain anymore. Not long after a USDA newsletter promoting the animal rights-backed Meatless Monday idea drew criticism, the Los Angeles City Council passed a resolution endorsing the campaign. Animal rights groups proclaimed a growing movement, to the delight of Michael Jacobson, carrot-juice-house prophet and head of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. For now, the measure remains non-binding, but given the desire of activists to follow alcohol regulation in revoking food choices, perhaps meat-free Mondays will be the new blue laws.

Of course, if this movement has as much support as author Michael Pollan’s “food movement,” meat lovers have nothing to worry about. That movement’s signature initiative, the labeling of some foods produced with biotechnology, lost a California referendum by over 570,000 votes. We suspect that making meatless Mondays law would be about as popular as, say, soda taxes, which even the stridently left-wing city of Richmond, California rejected by a margin of two to one.

And people are fighting back against attempts to hop onto Meatless Mondays’ radical bandwagon. U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (IA) vowed to resist the USDA’s seeming endorsement of the campaign by eating more meat on Mondays. (PETA used the opportunity to showcase its trademark bad taste, offering to take informal bets on when the 79-year-old politician would die.)

Elsewhere, university students aren’t digging into Meatless Mondays. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) tried to get Chico State University to join the Meatless Monday campaign. (Why does a “humane society” care about when people eat meat? Because HSUS is a vegan advocacy group that doesn’t run pet shelters.) Chico State students fought back, getting the school to drop the branding and keep the bacon. All HSUS got for its trouble was yet another crack in its carefully crafted mask. And when Bowdoin College held its meatless Monday, students responded with a fully stocked barbecue.

What does this all mean? For now, not much: Los Angeles’s resolution is non-binding, and evidence from other activist endeavors suggests that as long as the people maintain control — which Angelinos do under California’s strong direct democracy laws — anti-food activists will fail. Until bureaucrats take that control away, enjoy the bacon to start the work week, no matter what animal rights activists or preening legislators may say. And if they take your bacon away, Texas—outside of that one school—is more than willing to have you, whatever you choose to eat.

In a typical display of the group’s absolute contempt for human decency and good sense, PETA took the campaign to Germany in 2004. As part of atonement for its national sins and to prevent any chance of reviving sentiments that led to Hitler’s evil regime, Germany forbids trivializing the Holocaust. So, when PETA brought the “Holocaust on your plate” campaign to Germany, the Central Council of Jews in Germany filed for an injunction to stop PETA’s campaign. It was granted.

PETA appealed to Germany’s highest court, losing there in 2009. Not content to let German law and respect for the victims take precedence over its disgusting campaign, PETA appealed again to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Deustche Welle reports that an ECHR panel has now ruled against PETA. Score one for human dignity, and none for the self-described “press sluts.”

Or at least, score none for PETA itself, because one of the campaign directors managed to “fail upwards” in the perverse world of the animal rights movement. Matt Prescott, then a “youth outreach coordinator” for PETA, directed the campaign when it debuted in the United States nine years ago.

Prescott’s campaign earned him wide-ranging rebukes. A United States Holocaust Memorial Museum spokesman said that “Prescott was not honest with us about how he would be using the images. He did not say that it had anything to do with animals […] we would not have given permission for that.” The Boston Globe called PETA’s display “a disgrace.”

So, where does the brain behind such a repulsive exhibit and dubious tactics end up? Why, at the mother-ship of the animal rights movement, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) — not to be confused with any local pet shelter — where Prescott is the Food Policy Director. There, Prescott directs corporate campaigns that pressure food retailers into offering more vegetarian options and expensively produced animal products (as he also did for PETA).

That’s right: Despite all HSUS’s “moderate” positioning, it hired a man who said to a newspaper that “Anybody who eats meat is guilty of holding the same mindset that allowed the Holocaust to happen.” He’s not alone among HSUS types in making the demeaning connection of the ultimate human suffering with food production: Holly Cheever, part of HSUS’s veterinary arm and a longtime animal rights activist, reportedly said that “slaughterhouses are a kind of Auschwitz” at an animal rights conference. “Moderates” these radicals are not.

Egg-laying hens are generally housed in cages, which ruffles some people’s feathers. Aren’t birds better off running around outside, they ask?

The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) notes that hens in cages have lower mortality rates. Moreover, cage-free and free-range environments expose birds to more disease vectors, predation risks, and cannibalistic behavior (the phrase “pecking order” has a basis in fact).

The other view, animal rights, sees animals as equals if not superiors of people, otherwise known as “human animals” in the movement lingo. Animal rights groups have even invented a word, “speciesism,” linking failing to adopt the animal rights view with nefarious “isms” such as racism. Movement bigwigs from former PETA VP Bruce Friedrich to Humane Society of the United States CEO Wayne Pacelle have espoused it. PETA even wants this concept taught in schools.

In this radical view, eating a ham sandwich, wearing a leather belt, or mixing dairy creamer into coffee is morally equivalent to genocide, as PETA and its allies are happy to claim (until they’re caught in this offensive behavior). Extremists that adopt this worldview see keeping performing animals, horses and pets for entertainment purposes as slavery. PETA actually argued this before a federal judge, who all but laughed the argument out of court.

The science may not lead to making decisions that would look best in a cartoon. But just like the science on vegetarian doggie kibble, the science on farm practices doesn’t necessarily align with the animal rights songbook. If you’re looking for credible advice on animal welfare, the HSUS/PETA crowd are the last people you should seek out.