HumaneWatch

On Tuesday we told you about how Humane Society International is claiming to be supported by 11 million people worldwide. Now, it's entirely possible that the Humane Society of the United States (which runs HSI) got its elevensies mixed up. $11 million in debt, 11 million members—you can see how easy it would be to confuse the two.

We suspected that HSI was inflating its membership numbers, but suspicion and proof are two different things. Today we have both.

The European Commission hosts a website called the "register of interest representatives." (Think of it like a Yellow Pages for European lobbyists.) And the entry called "Humane Society International" shows something very, very interesting.

One of the first articles on this blog cast doubt on the Humane Society of the United States’s frequent claim that it has 11 million “supporters.” We now know, thanks to a recent HSUS fundraising letter, that the group has (at most) just 1.2 million members. (By our math, that number could be as low as 420,000.) The “11 million” claim is pure puffery that HSUS uses to try to increase influence in its lobbying efforts.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, perhaps HSUS will stop trying to inflate its influence in Washington (and countless state capitals) by a whole order of magnitude. But never fear, the group is already starting to use its fuzzy math overseas. In a press release issued today in Great Britain, Humane Society International (HSI) claims to have “11 million supporters globally.”

Here we go again.

In 2007, the Humane Society of the United States got a federal law passed that prohibits the U.S. Department of Agriculture from spending tax dollars to inspect horse meat. So although there’s nothing illegal about slaughtering horses for human consumption, the practice is halted as a practical matter. HSUS couldn’t be happier with that, of course.

Has the result been good for horses? The answer isn't as obvious as you think.

Unwanted horses are as much a part of life as unwanted dogs and cats, but the economics of the situation are a bit different. For starters, eating dogs and cats is pretty uncommon in the Western world, while horse meat can be found in most European and Canadian grocery stores (and all over Japan).

Sadly, Americans euthanize millions of “surplus” (we hate that term) pets every year, and no dog owner expects to “sell” his or her animal at the end of its life. On the contrary, euthanizing a family pet costs money. Most horse owners, however (especially in the American West), consider the animals to be livestock. Until a few years ago, a horse would actually bring a price when it was time to “put it down,” because there was a commercial market for the animal’s meat.

But no more, thanks to HSUS. The animal rights group doesn’t seem to have a problem with euthanizing horses, but it continues to oppose processing them for meat. This has created a cash crunch for horse owners all over America. And human nature being what it is, the end result is a lot of unwanted horses being turned loose to fend for themselves—or worse.

Disclaimer: No one at HumaneWatch is a constitutional lawyer. We don’t even play them on TV. So if any genuine legal eagles out there have a smarter or more cogent analysis of this, we’re all ears.

Maybe California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has forgotten about all those thermoses full of raw eggs he used to gulp down in his bodybuilding days. Or perhaps he’s still mad at the anonymous protester who hurled a raw egg at him during a 2003 campaign stop. (Schwarzenegger shook it off and said “this guy owes me bacon now.”)

But for whatever reason, the Governator signed a bill into law earlier this month (“AB 1437”) which could “Terminate” the concept of cheap, plentiful eggs in his state. The new law, heavily promoted and lobbied by the Humane Society of the United States, will extend the reach of Proposition 2—the 2008 ballot initiative requiring egg farmers to give their chickens far more precious real estate. AB 1437 requires eggs imported into California to follow the Proposition 2 standards imposed on in-state farmers.

Both Proposition 2 and this new companion law will take effect in January 2015. So we can expect four more years legal wrangling over just how much wing-flapping room the law requires for each bird.

Oh, goodie.

If you're wringing your hands today because you didn't attend the "Taking Action For Animals" conference put on by the Humane Society of the United States, take heart: You didn't miss much.

Several people who were at the Washington, DC event all weekend report that the whole thing was a big snooze-fest. We've uploaded a copy of the official program to the HumaneWatch Document Library, and one of those stalwart attendees is working on a first-person report for HumaneWatchers to read.

So stay tuned--we'll soon have our own post-game analysis to balance out the rose-colored PR emanating this morning from 2100 L Street in Washington.

HSUS staffers and their convention-goers are busily lobbying Congress today; so if you work on Capitol Hill, it might be a good day to print up a bunch of HumaneWatch ads and flyers. Just a suggestion.

If a Governor signs an anti-dogfighting bill into law and the Humane Society of the United States doesn’t issue a press release, is the statute still valid?

On Saturday Illinois Governor Pat Quinn officially made it a felony to hold a dog fight within 1,000 of a school, park, playground, or other kid-centered location. The new law also makes it a felony to bring a child under 13 to any dog fight.

Why the silence from HSUS? The group hasn’t issued a statement, mugged for any cameras, or even posted the news to its Facebook wall.

We monitor a lot of Internet chatter, and there are helpful HumaneWatchers all over who send us snippets from their e-mail Inboxes. So we read a lot of stuff about the animal rights movement.

Every once in a while something sticks out like a sore thumb. Today's entry in that category comes from a mailing list populated by animal activists in Sacramento, California. This particular entry comes from Dia Goode, a participant who is also a long-time staffer in the Democratic Caucus of the California legislature.

It's fascinating to see the cross-pollination of state and local politics at work, and (of course) the peripheral involvement of the Humane Society of the United States in the "welfare" of circus animals.