HSUS Success Could Have Much Broader Fallout For Society

If you are a row crop farmer who hasn’t raised livestock in years you might wonder how much energy and personal capitol you want to expend educating people about the anti-livestock efforts of the Humane Society of the United States. Besides the obvious large feed consumption, recent developments should have you even more concerned.

Regular readers of this blog realize giving donations to your local animal shelters is a good thing. They actually help animals, unlike the loosely related Humane Society of the United States that gives nearly nothing to support these efforts.  Instead, HSUS chooses to use its significant and questionably acquired resources to pursue an animal rights agenda and vegan lifestyle.

HSUS is systematically going from state to state trying to enforce their minority agenda by passing laws that would radically change safe, proven and productive livestock rearing practices. And they are leveraging their positive reputation – yes they have one because people think they are saving puppies – to tell farmers and ranchers how to do their job.

Their most recent effort in Ohio seemed to have ended well when voters showed them the door and told the carpetbaggers to go home. Ohio chose to form their own state board of experts to review, monitor and police livestock production practices.

This is where your radar should go up and the red lights should start flashing. HSUS is now trying to get an initiative on the November ballot that would force the state’s new Livestock Care Standards Board to mimic the policies that HSUS got passed with its last ballot measure, in California.

It appears the gathering of signatures wasn’t going well so HSUS sued the state of Ohio over a statute that was written to make sure only Ohioans could gather signatures to change state laws. HSUS remarkably won that suit.

This means groups like HSUS can now bring in paid, if not professional, employees to work the streets and gather the needed signatures to tell Ohio how to run their state. Given their past use of disingenuous images and information to acheive their goal, this does not bode well.

Personally, I am concerned other groups are watching the twisted success of HSUS and contemplating how this strategy might be applied to other issues and governing practices touching your profession and your day-to-day life. Precedence, even bad precedence, carries weight.

The good news is Ohio agriculture is working hard to assure a good outcome. In the interim, do your part by learning more about the real HSUS and tell your friends.