.........STRAIGHT FROM THE HORSES MOUTH

Duane A. Lienemann,

UNL Extension Educator,

Webster County

November 10, 2011 Edition

I want to start out this article with a tip of the hat to Sen. Jerry Moran from our neighbor state to the south who this week soundly criticized the USDA Animal Plant Health and Inspection Service (APHIS) for its plans to involve the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) in planning an animal welfare scientific forum with the exclusion of agricultural organizations or oversight. It is hard for me to even comprehend that they would do that. Kansas should be proud of their Senator for calling them out on this issue. I would bet a lot of people are sick of hearing about HSUS, as am I, but I could not let this go. We have to keep a vigilant eye on this group and how they align themselves against animal agriculture.

I was of course shocked and dismayed when I heard of the intent to hold this forum and especially that the USDA, who have the resources and should be relying upon the advice of animal scientists at our land grant universities or even within the Department of Agriculture, to plan and conduct a program on a “scientific approach to animal welfare.” I could easily myself have lined them up with an outstanding array of animal scientists and experts that would provide a qualified and accredited common sense and scientific approach to animal welfare. I could get most of them right from our own UNL-IANR and UNL Extension personnel.
It disgusts me that this “scientific” forum being planned by the Department of Agriculture is being done in league with the HSUS. You would think that the USDA and especially APHIS would base their forum on science-based research and opinions from agriculture animal experts-- not animal rights organizations, like HSUS, who I would not consider to be experts in animal agriculture or science --and in my opinion are the opposite. The USDA's mission is supposed to be to work to promote agriculture - not to work against the American farmer and rancher. In fact I looked up the USDA’s mission statement, and it reads like this: “We provide leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources and related issues based upon sound public policy, the best possible science, and efficient management.” Senator Moran hit it right on the nose when he stated that this proposed forum has very little science involved, and in his opinion is nothing more than the Department of Agriculture spending taxpayer dollars on a gig to provide the Human Society of the United States a public forum to espouse its anti-agricultural and especially their anti-animal agriculture views and ideology. I absolutely agree.
Senator Moran serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee and a member of the Agricultural Appropriations Subcommittee and came across the request for funding for this ill-conceived forum when reviewing appropriation requests from the USDA-APHIS. To him it was clear that the Department of Agriculture is catering to an outside organization, instead of doing what they should be doing in using the resources that are a part of their own system. He also asked: “If USDA-APHIS was interested in science, why would it allow an animal rights organization to steer its agenda?”
I agree with Senator Moran that the USDA should live up to its mission statement and work to promote agriculture, not to work against farmers and ranchers best interest—and I would say, not to work against the best interests of the consumer of food in this country. Senator Moran referred to a USDA memo that states that HSUS and other welfare advocacy groups would be invited to participate in a pre-planning meeting for the forum with senior leaders from wildlife services, animal care, and veterinary services. These groups would have input into the topics to be discussed, potential speakers for the topics, dates and times for the forum, how the forum should run, etc. No mention is made in the memo of asking any agricultural organization or animal scientist for pre-planning assistance. According to the memo, HSUS is going to set the agenda for this forum. Now you know full well that even if legitimate members of the agriculture industry were later invited to the event, that agriculture would already have the cards stacked against them.

HSUS is a national lobbying organization that spends most of its budget to lobby against farmers and ranchers that provide us with the food and clothing that we enjoy in this country. In fact, tax documents show that HSUS spends less than 1% of its budget on grants to animal shelters. Most of their money comes primarily from donations given by people who think it actually goes to animal shelters to protect and serve the sad eyed cats and dogs that are portrayed in the ads that they play on prime time TV and on the radio. It instead goes primarily to pay people to raise more money for them, lobbyists, lawyers to initiate ballot initiatives, and mostly to pay extravagant wages and retirement packages for Wayne Pacelle and his group, which are primarily moved up from extreme groups like ALF and PETA.

Given these facts, you would have to wonder why the Department of Agriculture is giving this organization this platform and shunning producer-based organizations or Land Grand College personnel. I, for one, will be writing or calling my Senator and Congressman to express my displeasure with this forum and how they are setting it up. I hope some of you will join me. There is absolutely no end to what this group of Vegan-based, extreme animal rights/activists will do to get to their goal of eliminating animal agriculture in the US. This just gives more credence to how sneaky and dangerous they are. Now, even our USDA/APHIS is giving them a tax payer funded platform to spin their web. USDA should live up to its mission statement and work to promote agriculture, not to work against farmers and ranchers best interest—and I would say, not to work against the best interests of the consumers of food raised by those farmers and ranchers in this country.

The preceding information comes from the research and personal observations of the writer which may or may not reflect the views of UNL or UNL Extension. For more further information on these or other topics contact D. A. Lienemann, UNL Extension Educator for WebsterCounty in Red Cloud, (402) 746-3417 or email to: dlienemann2@unl.edu or go to the website at: http://www.webster.unl.edu/me