Wayne Pacelle: A Humane Nation

Talk Back: Petland's Predicament

Two weeks ago we announced a class action lawsuit alleging that retail chain Petland Inc. and the Hunte Corporation, one of the country's largest commercial dog brokers, have conspired to sell unhealthy dogs to unsuspecting consumers. The lawsuit includes claims that these companies have been purchasing dogs from puppy mills and are selling sick and genetically compromised dogs to consumers who want a loving companion.

Since we announced the filing of the legal action, HSUS staff have been overwhelmed with hundreds of additional heartbreaking stories from Petland customers whose puppies either died shortly after purchase or required costly veterinary treatments because of parasites, viruses or hereditary ailments. Jonathan Lovvorn, our vice president and chief counsel for Animal Protection Litigation, has recorded a video update on the case, which I encourage you to watch.

And today I also wanted to post some of your responses.

These organizations like Petland should not be selling dogs from puppy mills. It encourages a horrible practice. There are already too many dogs in shelters, and they should be given great homes. —Richard Marranca

I am so happy that there is a class action lawsuit against Petland stores. They have been allowed to get away with the puppy mills way too long as it is. I bought my Persian cat from Petland 16 years ago, but did not know at the time about what I know now. If I had known then what I know now, I would have never bought my cat from them. I tell everyone I know to not buy a pet from them. I wish you all the luck and will be praying continually for this lawsuit. I would really like to see Petland shut down, and all the puppy mills stopped. Lots of fines and jail time would help a lot of these puppy mills to cease. I just can't stand the mistreatment of animals. —Tammy Saunders

I too have a Petland puppy mill puppy. She was about three months old when I got her. She had pneumonia that we knew of. After $6,000 dollars later and a lung biopsy all before she was a 1-year-old, it was determined that she had multifocal ateletasis, severely damaged lungs; her lung capacity is less than 50 percent. She is now 3 years old, but has never been able to play or run because she cannot breathe. She is always coughing and wheezing. And to top it off, she also has arthritis because her front legs were dislocated sometime before I got her. They finally did give me a refund, but they wanted me to return her and they would give me another puppy. Was that a stupid comment on their part or what? —Pam

"At Petland we care"? Apparently not. I hope the day comes when pet stores become pet supply stores. There is too much economic pressure to cut corners and mishandle critters in the animal trade. —James Burnette

A Rancher's Critique of Animal Agriculture

Whether it was Wendell Berry or Wes Jackson, it’s nothing new to have ranchers and enthusiasts of living off the land offer strong critiques of factory farming. Traditional ranchers and other animal producers have always done things differently than factory farmers. But Nicolette Hahn Niman’s "Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms," is one of the best I’ve seen in a long while. Partly because of her extremely unusual background as an environmental attorney, animal welfare advocate, and now a rancher (since her marriage to long-time rancher Bill Niman), Hahn Niman is a formidable figure in contemporary food policy debates, and a staunch advocate of rethinking our relationship with animals reared for food.

"Righteous Porkchop" traces Hahn Niman’s decade-long personal and intellectual odyssey, from her time in local Michigan government, to her work as an environmental lawyer investigating “hog factories” with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to her courtship with Bill—a rancher committed to offering a commercial alternative to factory farms—to her current work as an advocate of traditional husbandry.

The book is far more than a memoir, however. It’s an incisive exposé of the modern meat, poultry, and dairy industries, based on her considerable experience and methodical approach to research. It’s a highly readable work, too, offering an excellent brief history of the industrialization of animal agriculture, a spirited account of her fight against giant hog factories responsible for so much environmental despoliation in North Carolina, an exploration of the connections between industrial fish farming and animal agriculture, an indictment of the failure of environmental agencies to enforce laws against major polluters from industrial agriculture, and a personal account of the challenges of sourcing and purchasing food from farmers committed to humane husbandry.

In "Righteous Porkchop," Hahn Niman also does a terrific job of answering the so-called “profitability” claim, the idea that factory farming is necessary and unavoidable as a model of raising animals for food. It’s the industry’s political and economic power that explains the prevalence of industrial facilities, not their greater economic efficiency. Because of that power, agribusiness can foist all kinds of external costs onto government and taxpayers.

The Nimans’ union, which brought together a vegetarian and a rancher both committed to the principle of doing better than factory farmers in their treatment of animals, is a dynamic theme throughout the book. Bill is a pioneering figure who proved that it is possible to raise farm animals with commercial success, without resorting to exceedingly cruel practices like gestation crates or all-indoor confinement, and he was a member of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, which concluded that the current practices of factory farms pose unacceptable risks to public health, the environment, and animal welfare. Hahn Niman is a very rare hybrid—a rancher and vegetarian—and she believes that all of us, vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike, should support those who are trying to raise the bar for animal welfare in the agricultural sector.

Michael Pollan, in his best-selling book "In Defense of Food," gives us pithy advice: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Hahn Niman tells us some similar things in her work. Eat less meat. Return more animals to pasture. Even pay a little more for the foods that ensure a higher standard of welfare. Vote with your fork, alleviate suffering, and shift the market. And, as she writes, “Do not thoughtlessly eat foods from animals. Know the source. Question the methods.”

The message of this fine work also resonates with the policy of The HSUS on these questions. We believe in the Three Rs—reducing the consumption of meat and other animal-based foods; refining the diet by eating products only from methods of production, transport, and slaughter that minimize pain and distress; and replacing meat and other animal-based foods in the diet with plant-based foods.

Talk Back: Seal Hunt, Puppy Mill Rescue

As world pressure mounts against the hunt, our ProtectSeals team remains in Canada to document the annual commercial seal kill and broadcast the cruelty across the world. So many of you have been moved by the reports sent back by Rebecca Aldworth and today I wanted to post some of your comments:

I just finished watching the new video of the seal slaughter and I am so devastated. I cannot even imagine how Ms. Rebecca and her team are feeling. This is truly an outrage and one of the most horrifying things I have ever seen. You said it, this is truly hell. All for fur? I cannot even find words as I am angry and sickened by this. My thoughts and prayers go out to Ms. Rebecca and her team and also to all those beautiful babies out there. I pray that God will keep all of them safe. —Karen Wagner

Thanks to Rebecca for sharing this story. It takes courage to do what you do, to watch this brutality and then document the bloodbath. It saddens me to know that people can do this and have no remorse. Our marine life is precious and we should be protectors, not killers. I hope that our Canadian government will soon wake up to stop this senseless slaughter. Until then I will continue to donate and support this cause. —Nancy Ball

Every day this week I have started out my work day with this blog and a quick cry over the horrors these seals are suffering. All the money I can donate and the friends I can inform cannot satisfy my need to help this cause. —Nicole

I'm checking in every hour for updates from the ice on the horrific seal slaughter nightmare. I'm behind you 100 percent. You and the baby seals are in my thoughts and prayers all day long. God bless each and every one of you! Words cannot express my gratitude to you for your unbelievable bravery. Thank you again. —Patty

My heart hurts reading this. Those poor innocent helpless creatures. I'm ashamed of my kind and hopeful that change will come soon. Thank you for this honest picture. —Shakti

How to Say Spay

Here in D.C., we are getting our first sightings of the messengers of spring—crocuses, daffodils, and songbirds, with cherry blossoms soon to come. But for animal shelters and rescues in D.C. and elsewhere throughout the nation, other harbingers of spring are baskets and boxes of homeless kittens and puppies being dropped off or found abandoned in the community.

This kitten and puppy season will extend into summer and often strain the resources of shelters, which especially in this economy are struggling. We know the unfortunate results, yet we also know how to prevent it: by promoting and enabling spay and neuter in our communities.

For the past five months we’ve been rolling out a social marketing campaign in Louisiana and Mississippi, encouraging Gulf Coast residents to spay and neuter their pets. In February I hinted at the first promising results and now I have an update. We’ve just posted all of the materials borne of the project at humanesociety.org/spayneutercampaign.

Please take a moment to watch the television ads, view the billboards, posters and other creative materials, and read our report, which provides detailed findings from our research concerning owners of unaltered pets, and explains the science behind the ads.

The ads are already proving effective according to the accounts of personnel in spay/neuter clinics and shelters in the advertising markets, and we anticipate a bigger impact in the coming years. Even better, the ads and campaign strategy will be applicable beyond the Gulf, providing a template for increasing spaying and neutering and reducing pet overpopulation and euthanasia all across the country. Be sure to bookmark the campaign’s website because we’ll soon be sharing materials that you can download, modify with your community’s information, and put to use. And if you’re an HSUS member, look for a larger story about the campaign in the current issue of All Animals, which is mailing now.

We are very proud of this groundbreaking effort—a joint project of The HSUS and Maddie’s Fund—and we’re excited to share the results. I’d love to hear what you think.

Hovering Over Hell

Rebecca Aldworth, our lead campaigner against Canada’s cruel slaughter of baby seals, has just returned from a difficult day of documenting the hunt. I asked her to share her thoughts, since it’s so important that we tell this story to the world. Here’s her report.

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Today was very hard.

Sealers from the Magdalen Islands (map) had already killed most of the seals allotted to them in their quota by the end of yesterday. So it was likely they would kill the rest today very quickly.

We would only have a few hours to film the cruel reality of this slaughter.

Our helicopters left at dawn, battling gale force winds to reach the killing zone. On the horizon, I could see sealing vessels working their way through the ice floes, slaughtering as many seals as they could before the quota was filled. We came closer, and the blood began to appear. Giant pools of it, spread all across the ice. Every few hundred feet, dozens of carcasses were abandoned in macabre piles.

© The HSUS

Once we reached the vessels and our cameras were rolling, it was only a minute before a sealer violated the Marine Mammal Regulations (guidelines intended to reduce cruelty). He didn’t bother to check to ensure the animal was unconscious before slicing her open. All around, terrified seals attempted to crawl away from the blows of the clubs, but they had no escape.

We filmed everything we could, but within an hour, the sealers had reached their quota.

As the vessels headed back to shore, we landed to film the aftermath. On the ice: silence. The sealers had clubbed to death almost every seal in sight. Open graves of skinned baby seals covered the ice in all directions. So many sightless eyes followed us across the ice as we moved through the area.

Just ahead of us, we saw two live seal pups—left alone in the carnage. These babies were saved by their white fur, which almost entirely covered them. But their salvation is temporary. On Friday, the hunting begins again, and hundreds of thousands more seals will die.

We passed one pup who had crawled into a small cave formed by ice. He hid his head as we approached, clearly terrified. I tried to talk softly to him, to let him know that it would be okay. But he just lay there, hiding his head. This three-week old seal pup had just seen hundreds of others beaten to death in front of him. To him, people now mean clubs and violence and pain.

Today, we filmed this horror—the tiny carcasses such a stark reminder that this is a slaughter for fur. They died by the thousands here, painfully, just to produce fur coats that no one needs.

On Friday, we leave for the second area of killing, and I know what we will see there. But I also know that we are close to ending this, and that we may never have to witness this kind of cruelty again.

As we get ready to leave for the remote area where this next phase will occur, please be a part of our team. Visit humanesociety.org/protectseals to find out what you can do to stop this cruelty forever, and help us spread the word.

From the Ice to Arkansas: Everywhere for Animals

With its strength and reach, The HSUS has the ability to fight battles on multiple fronts—taking on factory farming, the exotic pet trade, Petland and its puppy mill connection, the use of chimpanzees in research, animal fighting, and so much more.

© The HSUS
Sealers begin the killing as the ProtectSeals team observes.

Yesterday was a great example of how we are on the front lines fighting for animals. Our ProtectSeals team was bearing witness to the most horrendous cruelties against baby seals in Atlantic Canada, documenting the first day of the annual commercial seal kill and spreading the word to the world that it must end. Rebecca Aldworth, who leads our team, has posted her observations here, and will continue to file updates throughout the hunt.

And, at the same time, members of our Field Services staff, led by Arkansas State Director Desiree Bender and Central Director Lou Guyton, and our Emergency Services unit were deployed in northwestern Arkansas, rescuing hundreds of neglected dogs from a lifetime of misuse and abuse in a puppy mill. Scotlund Haisley, our senior director of Emergency Services, shared with staff this dispatch on the rescue mission, and I thought I’d share it with you.

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Today’s rescue started this morning at 5:30 am, but the wheels were set in motion weeks ago. A large-scale puppy mill raid like this one requires hundreds of hours of planning and coordination to be successful. This morning as we struggled to rise before the sun our team knew they had a long day of exhausting, emotionally draining work ahead of them. But tonight there is one less puppy mill in Arkansas and 361 neglected animals resting peacefully—many for the first time in their lives.

As The HSUS and United Animal Nations set up the emergency shelter my field team and I drove down a dirt road with the sheriff and our friends from the Humane Society of Missouri to serve the warrant. I knew that we were getting close when the stench of decades of suffering reached us. We came upon a scene common in the puppy mill industry. Hundreds of dogs were living in rusty wire cages wallowing in their own waste. As we delved deeper into the 82-acre property the abuse became progressively more disturbing.

It was especially bleak inside the home, where 100 dogs were being kept. The interior was a combination of mass breeding facility and compulsive hoarder. Wire cages were stacked on top of ammonia-soaked carpet and surrounded by waist-high piles of sales records and books. In this sea of filth we found a litter of day-old pups. The runt was limp and lifeless when we reached him. Rescuers rushed him to the on-site vet who was able to revive him. I then had him transported to our emergency shelter, where the sheltering team was able to stabilize him.

© The HSUS
One of 361 dogs rescued in Arkansas.

This puppy just beginning his life was moments from death. His rescue deeply touched me. I was also moved by the rescue of another dog who was nearer to the end of life. We came upon a senior Akita who had lived out his entire existence in a wire run with a concrete floor and nothing else. This massive 150-pound-dog was both blind and deaf. Many dogs faced with such an existence would become aggressive, but this dog was as gentle as a lamb. As we removed him from his run he hugged the ground with his body, refusing to leave his small prison for fear of the unknown. After 10 years of neglect we have given him the opportunity to experience kindness and comfort in his final years.

I was also struck by the diversity we found at this mill. They were churning out a wide variety of breeds—some so unusual many consumers assume they are not victims of mass breeding. I can say from first-hand experience that no breed is immune to the horrors of this industry. The owners had not limited their neglect to the dogs on their property. Our team also found 29 mistreated horses roaming their farm.

It took responders hours to round up this herd of unsocialized horses. They were suffering from severely overgrown hooves, malnutrition and other untreated medical conditions. The horses, like the dogs, were kept strictly to turn a profit. These horses have joined the rescued dogs at our emergency shelter on their way to a new life.

This evening at 8:30 I walked down the rows of the emergency shelter as the dogs were being settled in for the night. Volunteers were refilling water bowls, cleaning soiled cages and laying down soft blankets. I was struck by how remarkably different this night would be for the rescued animals. Dogs that had been pacing incessantly on wire grates were now curled up comfortably slumbering on clean bedding. It was as if they knew they were free. My final kiss goodnight was to the day-old puppy, who had been slated for death just 12 hours prior, but was now thriving at his mother’s side. It gives me peace of mind to think that he will never know the horrors that the others on the mill experienced their entire lives.

This is our ninth puppy mill bust in as many months. In this world of seemingly endless suffering we must shoulder the mantle of compassion and believe that no one is beyond hope of rescue.

Give Me a Home Where the Wild Horses Roam

My friend Madeleine Pickens has been in the news recently with her passionate appeal to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to take up her plan to create a sanctuary for thousands of wild horses and burros on public rangelands. Right now, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), within the Department of the Interior, continues its costly, inhumane, and self-defeating roundups. Several years ago, in a late-night and little-noticed subversion of the democratic process, former U.S. Senator Conrad Burns of Montana succeeded in amending the law in order to allow the slaughter of horses and burros who are older than 10 years of age and who had been up for adoption three times.

© Corbis

Earlier this month, Madeleine and I both testified before a subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee in support of H.R. 1018, the Restore our American Mustangs (ROAM) Act, introduced by full committee Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), a staunch advocate of horse protection and an unyielding animal welfare advocate. Rahall’s bill, co-authored by Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), would reverse the Burns rider and ban slaughter of wild horses and burros, reopen millions of acres originally designated for horses so more can roam free, implement contraceptive programs as an alternative to the costly round-ups, and institute other reforms to honor the original intent of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 and to recognize the rightful place of horses and burros on our nation’s public lands.

This legislation, like Madeleine’s plea, could not be more timely. Currently, the BLM is taking more horses off the range than it can adopt, and as a result, the agency is amassing an enormous and unsustainable number of horses in short- and long-term holding facilities. For fiscal year 2009, the captive horse management program will consume an astonishing 75 percent of the agency’s total resources for horse and burro protection. There are at least 30,000 horses in short- and long-term facilities, at an estimated annual cost of $27 million. The new Administration must retool the program, and that’s exactly what Madeleine is asking Salazar to do.

The HSUS has been working to halt the destruction of the nation’s wild horse and burro populations since the late 1950s, and has been a vigorous defender of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act since its inception. But we’ve also invested scientific and financial resources into the management tool of immunocontraception, a birth control method that could be usefully deployed to help with the management of horse and burro herds.

If you have a chance, please do take the action step Madeleine Pickens recommends. You can also encourage your U.S. Representative and Senators to support H.R. 1018, which will provide the agency with the guidance it needs to get out of the rut it’s been in for the last several decades. The wild horses and burros who roam our public rangelands are a national treasure, and it’s time we took steps to ensure that they’ll always be there.

Talk Back: Safety for Baby Seals, Downer Cattle

From my perch at The HSUS, I see so much change for the good occurring for animals. Last week, I was beyond thrilled by the Russian government’s announcement to end the killing of baby seals in that country. Vladimir Putin the week before had signaled his disgust for the hunt, calling it a “bloody business,” so we knew the government was astir. This action is expected to result in 35,000 seals being spared.

© Brian Skerry

It should be a jolt to the government of Canada that it is getting a lesson in ecology and humane treatment from Russia and Putin—who do not strike most people as particularly warm and fuzzy. The action by Russia further isolates Canada and its state-sponsored slaughter of baby seals. It is welcome news for seals, but also comes at a particularly opportune political moment, as the European Union considers a ban on the import of seal pelts into that massive economic market. With markets closing, and global economic climate discouraging luxury product purchases like seal-skin coats, Canada’s seal hunt is teetering.

And many of you were also elated by the news of President Obama’s announcement to ban downer cattle from getting into the food supply. The policy should have been in place during the Bush years, but leaders there did not complete the job, and actually retreated more than a couple of times on the issues. Here’s some of your feedback.

My heart celebrates this decision—it has been broken each time I would see the torment on the faces of downed cows being tortured to stand. Thank you HSUS for pushing the no-downer policy, and thank you President Obama for making this happen finally! Bravo to Wayne, and to our president and to all of us who refuse to sit by idly and watch inhumane treatment of innocent animals of any kind. —Barbara Burrows

It's about time! Much gratitude to Wayne and his wonderfully compassionate investigators who bravely brought the issue of the horrific and uncalled for inhumane treatment of sick cattle to the forefront. No animal, whether they are used for food, or otherwise, should have to suffer such barbaric and cruel treatment, only to be killed. Maybe there is hope for the United States to become a truly humane nation. Thank you for providing a voice to those who cannot speak. —Ihilani

I praise this new Administration's policy to ban downed animals from the food supply—let's keep it out of our pet food too! Furthermore, let's treat every sentient being, especially those who are raised for food, with dignity, respect, and compassion. After all they are dying to provide us with food—they are giving up their bodies to feed us. They deserve our humane care while living and a humane death when slaughtered for food. And if they are sick, they deserve to be treated with compassion. —Joan Benincasa

Congrats on all your hard work. It's about time these poor animals are exempt from the food chain and our meat-eating population isn't exposed to the archaic result of torment and whatever the meat retrieved from these animals contained. —Desiree Barbazon

I applaud President Obama and Secretary Vilsack for having the courage to put an end to the extreme cruelty inflicted on "downers". May this be the beginning of the end for all who engage in cruel acts against animals, whether they be farm, domestic or wildlife. —Regina Massaro

The undercover footage from the dairy cow slaughterhouse continues to have a far-reaching and resounding effect. Fantastic! —Susan Hargreaves

An Afternoon with Horses

Today, I am in Pittsburgh at the Allegheny HYP Club to give a lecture on animal issues. I was invited by an old Yale college classmate, Matt Meade, who brought me to town. One of my other hosts is Karen Poirier, the president of the Allegheny HYP and a development officer at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and she and Matt arranged for me to receive a private tour of an exhibit called “The Horse.” It’s been a critical and popular success, first on exhibit in New York and then in Pittsburgh.

More than any other animal, the horse has shaped the course of human history since domestication began about 6,000 years ago in eastern Asia, perhaps in modern Kazakstan, and this is an exhibit worth seeing and studying.

Today, we are at a juncture in our relationship with the horse—loving horses, but with many people still exploiting them for a variety of purposes. The HSUS is working hard to protect America’s wild horses and burros, to halt the slaughter of horses for human consumption, and to stop abuses like the soring of Tennessee Walking Horses. We also support reforms in horse racing, so that horses are not in competitive racing as two-year-olds and not drugged to enhance performance or get unfit horses on the track.

I recorded a brief conversation with Sandi Olson, co-curator of "The Horse" and the museum's curator of anthropology, at the tail end of the tour. You can see it here.

Cockfighting: Banned and Busted

About six months ago, Louisiana became the 50th state to ban cockfighting—an historic marker in our fight against malicious animal cruelty. On Saturday, Louisiana State Police raided the Little Bayou Club, a large cockfighting pit in the southwestern part of the state, charging 37 people and seizing more than 600 birds and $60,000—the first major bust in the state under the new law.

© iStockphoto

When the law was enacted, we made a commitment to state law enforcement leaders to help them vigorously enforce the ban. In the case of the Little Bayou Club, we utilized our intelligence-gathering abilities and expertise to provide the state police with a schedule of cockfights set to take place at the venue. Now the pit owner, and a few other key players, may be charged with felonies.

Some months before this legislation passed in Louisiana, New Mexico banned cockfighting—the culmination of another long-standing battle, where The HSUS teamed up with Animal Protection of New Mexico to make that state the 49th to outlaw the practice. At least 10 raids have occurred in New Mexico since the ban went into effect. One of the first was in December 2007, when local authorities, accompanied by HSUS and APNM staff, raided the Otero Game Club—among the top three cockfighting pits in the state. This month HSUS staff returned to the state, to provide training for nearly 100 law enforcement officers at a state police and sheriff association meeting, and later to advise the principals involved in the formation of the New Mexico Attorney General’s Animal Cruelty Task Force.

Virginia is another state where there is a new no-nonsense attitude toward cockfighting. Previously home to the second weakest anti-cockfighting law in the nation, Virginia now has one of the strongest. Just two months after the new law went into effect in 2008, a large cockfighting farm in Loudoun County was raided, plus another farm nearby. The busts were set into motion when The HSUS Animal Cruelty and Fighting Campaign took information to local authorities, showing that the facility was believed to be breeding roosters for cockfights. Two more raids followed in the state, including one that came about through a tipster who provided information to The HSUS in exchange for our standing cash reward.

At The HSUS we believe in passing strong laws to protect animals. Equally important, we believe in making sure those laws are enforced—and that’s why we are working with law enforcement to raid animal fighting operations from Connecticut to California. Whether through the work of our investigators, gathering intelligence on illegal animal fighting operations; training programs for police officers and districts attorney on investigating and prosecuting animal fighting crimes; or our cash rewards to entice informants to come forward, we are working on running all animal fighters out of the business, and if necessary, into state detention.

A side note: For the third year in a row, Indianapolis Motor Speedway Chairwoman Mari Hulman George has generously donated special VIP packages to three Indy races (the Indianapolis 500, the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, and the Red Bull Moto GP), providing access not generally available to the public. The packages are being auctioned on eBay and close tomorrow at noon EST. All proceeds support our equine protection efforts, so if you care about horses or are a fan of motorsports, you'll want to take a look.