Humane Honesty At Last

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has a good PR game going on: Its promotional material largely focuses on the welfare of dogs and cats, but a significant proportion of its resources are spent promoting the rights of other animals—including cows, pigs, and chickens. It’s a clever ploy that allows HSUS to appear mainstream while it pursues the same agenda of the more infamous PETA: to end as many human uses of animals as possible. First and foremost, that means getting rid of animal products in our diet—including meat, eggs, cheese, and milk.

Skeptical? Don’t just take our word for it—listen to a former HSUS Vice President in an audio recording we recently discovered.

In October 2006, HSUS’s then-VP for farm animal issues Miyun Park spoke as part of an “Expert Panel on Poultry” at an event organized by the Animals and Society Institute (another animal rights group). Park openly laid out HSUS’s priorities. Listen for yourself:

Here’s the transcript (emphasis added):

For all of us, our goal is to reduce the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest number of animals. We don't want any of these animals to be raised and killed. But when we're talking about numbers like “one million slaughtered in the U.S. in a single hour,” or “48 billion killed every year around the world,” unfortunately we don't have the luxury of waiting until we have the opportunity to get rid of the entire industry.

And so because of that, a number of organizations including the Humane Society of the United States, we work on promoting veganism, and encouraging people to make daily choices that will positively impact the welfare of animals, and at the same time to reduce the greatest amount of suffering for these animals.

We have a very active cage-free campaign. Are we saying that cage-free eggs are the way to go? No, that’s not what we’re saying. But we’re saying it’s a step in the right direction, getting these birds out of cages so that maybe they can actually spread their wings.

Today, Park runs the Global Animal Partnership, which has developed an animal welfare rating system for a large organic-food grocery chain. But HSUS’s top leaders, some of whom came from other radical animal rights groups, still aim to “get rid of the entire [animal farming] industry.” Keep that in mind the next time you see an HSUS ballot initiative pushing for “modest” reforms.

Many people who give HSUS money believe it will go to pet shelters. In truth, less than one percent of HSUS’s money filters down to community-based “humane societies” and other pet shelters. A far larger slice pushes the agenda Park talked about—a slow but steady push to take away consumer choices by forcing meat, eggs, and dairy foods out of more Americans’ reach.