HSUS escalates war on animal agriculture

Since California voters passed Proposition 2 in 2008, Humane Society officials have ramped up their campaigns to alter state laws regarding animal welfare. They're reaching out to young people, including a presentation at last month's National 4-H Conference in Washington, where they encouraged teenage future farmers to treat livestock with respect. The organization has also been buying chunks of stock in publicly traded food companies, in part to be able to introduce shareholder resolutions and pressure company executives to alter their purchasing decisions. The strategy has worked. Companies including Wendy's, Sonic Corp. and the parent company of the IHOP and Applebee's restaurant chains have all started shifting to using cage-free eggs, according to Humane Society officials. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation's largest grocer, said in February that the eggs sold under its store label were now cage-free. But the farmers are fighting back. In recent months, agribusiness lobbyists and farm groups have bombarded companies sympathetic to the Humane Society with letters asking them to halt donations to the group. "HSUS seeks to remove meat from our dinner tables, leather goods from our closets, animals from zoos and circuses and eventually -- pets from our families," Kansas Farm Bureau President Steve Baccus wrote in a letter to Bank of America Corp. posted on the bureau's website. The Humane Society, he wrote, is "a powerful, well-funded activist organization pursuing what most reasonable observers would consider an extreme anti-animal agenda."...more