HumaneWatch

Daily clippings culled from all over the electronic news world. (E-mail me with submissions for tomorrow.)

• HSUS outreach director Josh Balk: HSUS "crucial priority" is "to reduce the number of animals killed for food"
• Rural blogger on HSUS: "There are some nuts loose among the squirrels"
• Sioux Falls, SD columnist: HSUS likes to "falsely play on emotions to raise money"
• Take an interesting glimpse into how HSUS and HSI plot and plan globally

Last Friday two Members of the U.S. Congress introduced a bill that they're calling the "Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act." HSUS's press release—and oh, yes, they're involved—lays out the case:

The bill, H.R. 4733, simply requires that any food purchased for federal programs comes from animals raised with enough room to stand up, lie down, turn around and stretch their limbs ...

"This bill requires meat producers who sell to the federal government to follow the same guidelines that California producers have in place to ensure the animals are raised humanely," Rep. [Elton] Gallegly said.

Well, not exactly. In 2008, Californians passed "Proposition 2," which made unprecedented changes in the way pigs, egg-laying hens, and veal calves will be raised in the future. The law doesn't take effect until 2015.

And if this whole federal-purchasing-law gambit sounds familiar, that's because it is. Forcing animal agriculture to bend Wayne Pacelle's will if they want to sell food to the National School Lunch Program (and other federal government programs) isn't a new idea. HSUS tried it in 2007. And it went over like a rotten egg, never making its way out of committee.

If you have $200 burning a hole in your pocket and you live in the Dallas area, you too can fork over your money to HSUS's "puppy mill" program on March 26. That's when the HSUS "Spotlight Humane" gala will gobble up donor dollars like a politician in October. The only thing missing will be the rubber chicken. (An online schedule of HSUS events is helpfully provided by Tradeshow Multimedia, Inc.)

Events like this don't just happen by themselves. Someone has to advertise the tickets, rent a hall, pay a dance band, and hire a bouncer to keep the fur-wearing riff raff out. And that takes sponsorship money.

Here are the corporate sponsors for this little HSUS soiree:

• Mary Kay Cosmetics
  
• Wolfgang Puck Catering
  
• Sewell Auto Dealers
  
• Cafe Pacific Dallas
  

That last one's a doozy, considering that this landmark restaurant's specialties include "fresh fish and seafood, flown in daily, [and] prime beef from the Midwest." I wonder if anyone from HSUS did a tasting. Probably not.

But the real surprise for me was Mary Kay. I have to believe that it's not too late for that fine cosmetics company to "walk this back." What do you think?

p.s. HSUS has nuked its generic online list of corporate supporters. I wonder why?

Nation's Restaurant News is the biggest trade-press publication for people in, well ... the restaurant business. It has a readership of over 400,000 people, and the current issue includes an essay about HSUS by my Executive Director. Here's a little bit of what he has to say:

Numbers don’t lie: HSUS’s 2008 tax return shows $450,000 for hands-on shelters, and $2.5 million for pensions.

This means two things. First, the save-the-chickens movement insiders in HSUS’s top ranks plan to be hassling you long enough to retire on their laurels. And second, they’re getting cocky.

HSUS president Wayne Pacelle and his vegan cabal surely understand that Americans wouldn’t be so eager to donate $100 million every year if they understood the group’s real agenda.

I don’t know about you, but if I donated money to help some puppies find a new home, I’d be pretty ticked off to learn that I was actually bankrolling a lobby that wants to put ranchers and medical researchers out of business, ban hunting and fishing, and give hogs the legal right to sue farmers ...

HSUS does not exist to help abandoned pets, and its donors are slowly but surely getting the joke. Radical extremism is alive and well in America—and some of the ringleaders wear suits.

Daily clippings culled from all over the electronic news world. (E-mail me with submissions for tomorrow.)

• If you still have a Microsoft "hotmail" account, you're part of the problem.
• Just a reminder: "American Humane is not affiliated with the Humane Society of the United States, an organization that primarily uses litigation and legislation to promote animal rights"
• Colorado letter-writer raises awareness (hat-tip!)
• 12,000 people sign petition to sack Michael Vick
  
• Buckeye ag spokesman is keeping Wayne Pacelle honest (well ... trying to, anyway)
• The helpful HSUS oracle hath spoken: "A good quality breeder breeds the dogs in their homes"
• Kansas State Collegian columnist: Animal agriculture "should be left to those within and around the industry who know what they are doing and who don’t take the word of animal rights groups as gospel"
• Food blogger: HSUS "is run by a group of smooth talking, well dressed philosophy, history and English majors—no one on their board of directors has any agricultural experience."

I have absolutely had it up to here (*hand motion at my forehead*) with the Humane Society of the United States promoting Michael Vick.

What is it with these people? Why is HSUS Chief Operating Officer Michael Markarian escorting him to an NFL awards dinner on Tuesday night?

HSUS spends tens of millions of dollars every year making the case that animals deserve the exact same level of legal and conscientious protection as people. Now imagine if a child-services advocate tried to arrange a death-row video hookup so that Richard Allen Davis (remember Polly Klaas?) could make a series of remorseful "don't do what I did" speeches. I think you get the picture. It's the hypocrisy that gets to me.

While I'm on the subject, why did the NFL allow Michael Vick to win a "courage" award in the first place? And why is BET giving him a reality show?

I have the distinct feeling that if HSUS hadn't made the Faustian bargain to get out in front of this sick publicity tour, Wayne Pacelle would be putting rhetorical body-slams on any other animal rights group that chose to take the lead.

My heartfelt apologies to Philadelphia Eagles fans, but when the Phillies won the World Series in 2008, that was something to be proud of. Michael Vick isn't. Rather, it's what Advertising Age called "a comprehensive public-relations scheme to rehabilitate his image." And HSUS is at the center of it.

If you were reading HumaneWatch all week, you learned ...

• You can't fool all of the people all of the time, but HSUS has apparently learned that 71 percent of us are incredibly gullible.
• HSUS's list of corporate supports kept shrinking, as a very savvy kitty-litter company took its claws out.
• Literally thousands of Americans are outraged enough by HSUS's relationship with the U.S. tax code to write the IRS about it.
• The HSUS "Humane Legislator of the Year" was exposed as a wildlife-bulldozing phony, and HSUS pigeonholed more than 100 of his colleagues as bunny-hugging PETA-types.
• If the USA Today blog ever publishes something you disagree with, you can get them to fold like a cheap tent.
• The HSUS "foreclosure pets" program lasted about as long as a vegan on All-You-Can-Eat Steak Night.

Come back soon for more truth-telling, research-sharing, and analysis of America's richest animal rights group!