When those in agriculture hear HSUS they likely think of an agenda that will disrupt the nation’s robust agricultural industry. While that is the case – Center for Consumer Freedom Director of Research David Martosko encourages us to remember that the activist group is also trying to interfere with the lifestyle of America’s consumers…
I think consumers should have access to as wide as possible a variety of choices. That includes the right to eat tofu, and the right to feed your children bok choi and the right to have a pork chop when you want to, and serve bacon and eggs, and the right to have cage-free eggs if you’re willing to pay $6.00 a dozen for them. All those choices should be there.
The problem comes when a class of elitist whether they’re elite foodies or elite environmentalist, or elite animal rights activist take it upon themselves to say “no, no we should decide what the range of choices should be, because you, you silly public aren’t enlightened enough to decided what’s best for yourselves.” And so, then, we see our choices narrow.
I’ve never tried foi gras in my life, but I resent the idea that somebody should tell me that I don’t have the right to.
Martosko says HSUS shapes its policies in a way that makes them sound great to the average consumer on the surface - but the problem lies in how to get to that end result…
Well you have to play the tape forward, and see where it leads you. And where it leads you is the place where HSUS, Wayne Pacelle and Paul Shapiro want all of us to be vegetarians, whether it’s our choice or not. There is no such thing as an animal production system that is humane enough to satisfy them.
I don’t care you could give every chicken in America daily rub downs, catered lunches by Wolfgang Puck, and i-Phones and a sauna, and it still wouldn’t be enough. They would still argue, in their private moments when the cameras aren’t rolling that those animals have personalities, and feelings and deserve to not be eaten. There is not satisfying those people. So, it’s not just about foi gras, it’s certainly not just about converting traditional caged systems to cage-free systems that won’t satisfy them either.
It’s for that reason Martosko launched HumaneWatch dot org. A website designed to shine the spotlight on HSUS and their day to day activities.
The beautiful thing about this project is that we’re able to use their own words, and their own documents and their own history to show what their agenda really is. We’re not making stuff up. Believe me, they have a staff of 30 lawyers over there and if I so much as breathe in the wrong direction I’ll get a nasty-gram from Wayne’s (Pacelle) office that says “you’d better do this, or I’m going to sue you”.
So, we have to be very careful, everything we say is backed up by facts and documents, and you can see the documents. You can play this game with them, but you have to do it in an engaging, entertaining way you have to have a sense of humor about it, and you have to be able to capture the public’s imagination, and I really hope that we’ve done that with HumaneWatch, or else you’re just talking an empty echo chamber and it doesn’t matter.
Again – that website is www dot humanewatch dot org (www.humanewatch.org). It was launched in February.
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