In his magisterial work “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argued that our time is the most peaceful era in human history. Average life expectancy, at least for people in western nations, has broken the 80-year mark. With better nutrition and sanitation and medical treatment, we are spared from many lethal diseases, and no longer powerless to fend or fight them off. We are much less likely to die from a violent act. In the last few decades, the world has been free of war between democracies. When wars or revolutions do occur, the body count is smaller than in earlier times.

It’s a provocative thesis, even if it seems counterintuitive. On the news, we see round-the-clock coverage of violence, such as murders, rapes and school shootings. In the post-9/11 era, there is an almost universal fear of terrorism and an intense focus on national security.

There can be no doubt that we still live in a violent time. But it compares favorably to the cataclysms of the great world wars of the 20th century, the U.S. Civil War, or the routine violence and death that occurred in the Middle Ages or, looking back further to pre-agricultural times, in tribal societies. Things have gotten better – and, Pinker argues, we’ve been through a “civilizing process,” a “humanitarian revolution,” and, most recently, a “rights revolution.”

In recent centuries, we’ve seen the emergence of democracy and human rights, and successful campaigns to end slavery, dueling, corporal punishment, wife-beating, and many other forms of coercion or violence that were once commonplace. In recent decades, we’ve seen an enormous expansion in political rights, a rise in literacy, an enhancement in per capita income and trade and commerce, and a substantial rise and growth in charity and empathy. All of these things help to make the world a better and safer place to live in.

Pinker does not exclude animals from his wide-angle lens. He recognizes the legal revolution against malicious animal cruelty and animal fighting of the last 150 years as part of our humanitarian progress. In the last three decades, we’ve seen a dramatic decline in rates of euthanasia in healthy and treatable animals, and newly energized campaigns to combat the biggest forms of institutionalized cruelty, such as factory farming, animal testing and the wildlife trade.

But even with this unmistakable progress, it’s hard to argue that things are better for animals across the board. While we’ve seen the first series of laws to restrict extreme confinement of farm animals in the European Union and the United States, factory farming occurs on a vast and expanding scale worldwide. We are mining the oceans of fish, and killing sea turtles, sea birds and marine mammals in the process. We are tough on the terrestrial wildlife, too, killing off predators and exploiting others for bushmeat, trinkets, trophies and pelts.

We are living at an odd moment in human history. There are more expressions of love and compassion for animals than ever before – with a larger-than-ever network of charities and a growing body of animal protection law. But there is still an extremely high level of exploitation and harm. So much of this is explained by the power we wield over animals and the vast number of human beings on the planet, settling so many habitable portions of Earth. 

But just as we’ve seen extraordinary changes in human-to-human relations, we are bound to see more changes for the better in human-to-animal relations. The humane movement, rooted in so many communities, is too powerful a force to be denied, the core values of our movement are too embedded in society, and there is also the ingenuity and creativity of the human mind that can transform so many traditional or seemingly essential forms of animal use into obsolete and archaic ones.

This kind of change – grand in its ambition and challenging because it calls for sacrifice – is not self-executing. It can only happen because good people, and the institutions they serve, demand good outcomes. It happens when they struggle, when they organize, and when they pursue the vision for, and then work to build, a truly humane society.

Our mission statement is both clear and compelling: Celebrating animals, confronting cruelty. While the confrontation side of our work gets most of the headlines – through investigations or corporate or public policy campaigns – we never forget that animals do so much to enrich our lives, our community, and our world. 

This month, for the second year, our friends at Penguin USA are kicking off the summer reading season with Read Humane, which features six of Penguin’s best-selling romance and mystery titles produced as special Read Humane editions. Each of the authors – including Read Humane spokesperson, Jill Shalvis, along with Linda O. Johnston, Miranda James, Leann Sweeney, Judi McCoy, and Ali Brandon – feature animals in their story lines. These are entertaining books, but Read Humane also has a serious purpose: Penguin USA is donating $25,000 to The HSUS’ Animal Rescue Team, and using the promotion to raise awareness of our work to rescue animals. You can read a review of Linda O. Johnston’s book, “Hounds Abound,” in the current issue of All Animals, and there’s an excerpt from it on the iPad version of our magazine. You can find out more about all of the books, as well as where to buy them, on the Read Humane webpage.

The Read Humane authors don’t just write about animals. From having their own pets, to promoting adoption and rescue or educating people about puppy mills, they celebrate the bond in their personal lives as well. And they are not alone.

Photographer Robin Layton, along with authors Kimi Culp and Lisa Erspamer, created a wonderful book, “A Letter to My Dog: Notes to our Best Friends.” Filled with Robin’s beautiful photos and touching notes to their dogs from celebrities and ordinary dog lovers, the book is sure to move you. The authors have also pledged a percentage of their royalties to support The HSUS, and Robin donated her services as a judge in our recent Pet Pageant photo contest.

Another Pet Pageant judge, photographer Seth Casteel, hit the New York Times Best Seller list with his photo book, “Underwater Dogs.” We’ve all seen a water-loving dog dive exuberantly into a pool after a ball. But Seth has captured what goes on beneath the water’s surface in amazing and hilarious photographs.

As successful as the book has been, in our opinion, it may not be Seth’s most important work. For several years, Seth has volunteered with animal shelters and rescue groups to take transformational photos of adoptable pets. Instead of “mug shots,” his photos reveal each animal’s personality in photos beautiful enough to put on any wall. Take a look at some of his before and after photos and you’ll see what I mean. Seth is now expanding this important project by conducting photography workshops (with the assistance of Greater Good, The Animal Rescue Site, The PetFinder Foundation, John Paul Pet, Halo and Free Kibble) to conduct workshops for shelters and rescues so every pet can be showcased in photos that literally show them in their best light.

I hope you’ll join us, and these remarkable authors and publishers, in celebrating animals.

India is known throughout the world as a nation of vegetarians, and vegetarianism is indeed very common there. In recent years, however, this growing economic power, even with its strong, animal-friendly religious and cultural traditions, has seen meat eating on the rise, and the worst elements of factory farming are taking hold. There are an estimated 140 to 200 million egg-laying hens living in conventional battery cages in the world’s largest democracy.

When I went to India last November to launch our new offices on the subcontinent, I visited nearly a half dozen battery cage facilities. I saw hens living in space allotments smaller than a sheet of printer paper. I saw filth and flies and overcrowding. And I saw animals who would never make it out of their cages alive.

Erin Van Voorhies

Such confinement violates the provisions of Section 11(1)(e) of the 1960 national Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, which requires that animals confined to cages be provided with reasonable opportunity for movement. Guided by the plain language of this foresighted statute, the Animal Welfare Board of India issued an advisory a year ago to all state governments stating that battery cages should not be used, and that existing battery cages should be phased out by 2017.

Humane Society International India has been following up with all of the state animal husbandry departments in the country, convincing them to issue a directive that it is a violation of the PCA Act to confine hens in battery cages. Accordingly, a majority of them have issued directives to their officers, and poultry farmers have been instructed to phase out and avoid battery cages, and not to make any investments in these extreme confinement facilities.

In India, there is a big gap between what the law says and what happens on the ground, and that’s especially true when it comes to animals. But in this case, the law is unambiguous, and we know that there are other ways to raise birds. This correction may take a while, but the trajectory is clear. Our staff members in India are determined to see this through. No nation that values animals, as India does, can indefinitely confine more than 100 million birds in these kinds of conditions. 

Speak Up For Hens! Tell India’s Government to Enforce the Ruling >>

Last night, during a marathon round of voting on amendments to its version of the Farm Bill, the House Agriculture Committee approved a destructive and constitutionally questionable amendment, offered by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, that threatens to wipe out important state laws banning the cruelest factory farming practices, and leave a raft of other state laws and rules regulating agriculture hanging in the balance.

The committee, over the objections of its leadership, did approve an amendment led by Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., by a vote of 28-17, building on the existing federal law against animal fighting by making it a crime to knowingly attend or bring a child to an animal fight (the vote tally is pasted below). The Senate Committee on Agriculture, which took up its version of the Farm Bill on Tuesday, included a similar provision in its bill, thanks to the efforts of committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and ranking member Thad Cochran, R-Miss. With both versions of the Farm Bill including the same core provisions on animal fighting, it should be included in any final bill approved by the Congress.

Agriculture Committee chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., and former chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Virginia, spoke out against the animal fighting bill. Goodlatte said he felt the McGovern amendment provides too severe a penalty for perpetrators, and argued that parents who brought a child to a dogfight would be separated from their children and that was something he couldn’t support. Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Oregon, one of the two veterinarians in the House, said he worried much more about not interceding when a parent brings a child to an animal fighting spectacle, with the violence and other forms of criminality all right out in the open. Ironically, Goodlatte touted his support for a prior upgrade of the federal animal fighting law in 2007, making interstate transport of animals for fighting a federal felony. Someone arrested for that crime has as much a chance of being separated from a child as an individual arrested for a bringing a child directly to a fight. The argument made little sense, and appeared to be just another attempt to stand in the way of any progress for animal welfare.

Goodlatte also joined Rep. King’s gambit to wipe out numerous state animal protection laws, including those regarding factory farm confinement, horse slaughter and shark finning, along with others related to food safety, environmental protection, worker safety and more. King’s measure passed by a voice vote after a contentious debate. There were forceful arguments raised against it by Reps. Jim Costa, D-Calif., Jeff Denham, R-Calif., John Garamendi, D-Calif., and Schrader.  

If passed by the full House, King’s amendment could allow the overturning of every voter-approved animal welfare ballot measure relating to agriculture, including Proposition 2 in California (banning extreme confinement crates for pigs, veal calves and laying hens), Proposition 6 in California (forbidding the sale of horses for slaughter for human consumption), Proposition 204 in Arizona (banning veal and pig gestation crates) and Amendment 10 in Florida (outlawing pig gestation crates). The amendment could also nullify six other state bans on gestation crates, horse slaughter bans in six states, comprehensive animal welfare standards adopted by the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board, and a raft of anti-downer laws and other animal protection laws designed to shield farm animals from abuse and extreme confinement.

The Senate version of the Farm Bill does not contain any language similar to the King amendment. The  HSUS and other groups will work to strip the King amendment from the House Farm Bill on the floor, and also push for adoption of the landmark agreement between animal welfare groups and the egg industry in phasing out the use of conventional battery cages, and creating minimum care standards for the welfare of laying hens. The battle over the Farm Bill is just now gearing up and now all members of Congress, and their constituents, can have input on the process.

Animal Fighting Amendment Votes:

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam’s veto of a proposed “ag-gag” bill yesterday almost overshadowed progress toward a milestone in our anti-gestation crate campaign: the New Jersey legislature gave final approval to Senate Bill 1921 to bring the Garden State that much closer to being the 10th state to ban the extreme confinement of breeding sows. Championed by state Sen. Raymond Lesniak, D-Union, the bill enjoys broad partisan support – having passed the Senate 29 to 4 and the Assembly 60 to 5. Now it awaits Gov. Chris Christie’s signature.

The HSUS

This legislative progress comes just two weeks after Canada’s top eight supermarkets agreed to phase out their purchases of pork from operations that confine sows in this extreme way. That’s in addition to the 50-plus companies in the U.S. that have made similar pledges – from McDonald’s to Costco to Cracker Barrel.

There’s a lot of talk by some within the pork industry that these confinement crates are humane. But how can a housing system be humane if the animals are immobilized for almost their entire lives? Isn’t it a priori inhumane to deny an animal the opportunity to engage in the most basic behaviors, including the opportunity to turn around?

As the states and so many North American corporations work to give pigs more space and better lives, there are some in Congress who are trying to subvert this elemental progress. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, one of the most anti-animal welfare politicians in modern history, is planning to offer an amendment tomorrow during votes in the House Agriculture Committee to nullify all state and local laws to protect farm animals (the measure is so radical it would also nullify state rules and laws related to worker safety, environmental protection, and food safety).

I have to laugh when politicians like King throw out their bromides, in their windy discourses on other issues on the House floor, about “protecting states’ rights.” The fact is, when they don’t like what the states do, they are quick to become advocates of federal supremacy. That’s not a case of principle, but of ideological opportunism and deception. Let’s hope that if members of the House Agriculture Committee do not place sufficient importance on animal welfare, at least they’ll pay attention to federalism and the other principles of our American Constitution.

NEWS ALERT: This morning, Governor Bill Haslam of Tennessee vetoed the legislature’s proposed ag-gag bill, squelching the only state anti-whistleblower measure that made it to a governor’s desk this year. See our full statement on this major outcome for our cause – preserving our right to conduct investigations and to document animal cruelty.

Now comes another sweeping, menacing attack against our movement – this time in Congress. An Iowa congressman wants to force a vote to repeal the rights of citizens to regulate how their food is produced. The traditional responsibilities of state legislators to establish laws governing food safety, animal husbandry and worker protections would be eliminated, wiped from the books – in both existing law and any future law. County and local ordinances? Eliminated.

Shocked? I am.

iStockphoto

This is the work of Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa. Typically, conservative Republicans like King vigorously defend states’ rights. But not, it seems, when they can serve special interests. In this instance, conservative values are tossed to the wind so that King and his allies can strong-arm the states aside. Yes, this is an almost unheard-of power grab, but it’s not a matter of King wanting the federal government to establish strong, uniform standards for agriculture. In fact, he’s dead-set against that too, as evidenced by his opposition to pending legislation establishing space requirements for laying hens and labeling standards for eggs (the Egg Products Inspection Act Amendments of 2013 - S. 820/H.R. 1731). No, in King’s world, weak or nonexistent standards would take the place of states’ rights – consumers and animals be damned.

You may have heard of the King amendment last year – when he advanced it as part of the 2012 Farm Bill. Well, the Farm Bill was sidetracked by election-year politics. But this year, Congress is likely to act and complete work on the bill. That means the King amendment is no longer a debating point, or a simple sop to the big ag lobby. It’s a threat to every consumer and to every animal in agriculture. The House Agriculture Committee is scheduled to vote on it Wednesday. This same committee voted in favor of a virtually identical King amendment last time around.

King’s goal is to overturn every voter-approved animal welfare ballot measure relating to agriculture – Prop 2 in California (banning extreme confinement crates for pigs, veal calves, and laying hens), Prop 6 in California (forbidding the sale of horses for slaughter for human consumption), Prop 204 in Arizona (banning veal and gestation crates), and Amendment 10 in Florida (outlawing gestation crates). The amendment could also nullify six other state bans on gestation crates, horse slaughter bans in a half-dozen other states, the comprehensive animal welfare standards adopted by the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board, and a raft of anti-downer laws and other animal protection laws designed to shield farm animals from abuse and extreme confinement.

But the reach of his amendment goes further. It seeks to nullify every state, county, or local law that creates any standard or condition relating to an agricultural production activity – so we’d have no state laws for agricultural facilities relating to worker rights, animal welfare, environmental protection, or public health. It’s hard to overstate how sweeping and far-reaching the King amendment is.

King thinks it’s fine to spend taxpayer money doling out billions to corporate farmers in the way of direct payments, crop insurance, predator control programs, and other subsidies. He’s built a reputation on it. But he doesn’t want the agriculture community to have to abide by any rules related to food safety, animal welfare, or environmental protection. In his mind, the federal government is a bank for the farm lobby, and not a protector of society’s broader interests in a safe, humane, and sustainable food supply.

He’s also spent his 10-year congressional career attempting to block any and all animal welfare laws. He favors killing horses for human consumption, killing American bison in Yellowstone National Park, and trophy killing of polar bears, even though they are an endangered species. He is the best friend that dogfighters and cockfighters have in Congress, trying to stop any law-and-order bill to make life tougher on these criminals. And get this: he was even one of a handful of lawmakers to oppose legislation that seeks to include pets in disaster planning.

We need level-headed members of Congress to stop this craziness now, before it becomes part of the billions of dollars in horse trading that any new Farm Bill produces. Contact your representative today and tell them to overthrow the King amendment.

At The HSUS, we confront the biggest forms of cruelty, much of it legal: from tens of thousands of animals sent to horse slaughter plants, hundreds of thousands suffering in puppy mills, millions killed for their fur, to hundreds of millions spending their lives in extreme confinement on factory farms.

Add it all up, and the numbers are so daunting that it might seem more practical to throw up our hands in surrender. After all, how can we possibly overcome industries whose collective revenues and political giving dwarf those of the entire animal protection movement?

The answer, for The HSUS and its many partners, lies in our ability to see beyond the statistics and pinpoint their root causes. It’s in our ability to appeal to both head and heart, using research and data and a strong sense of empathy and moral obligation to chip away at systemic animal abuses. We don’t just tell people how many pigs spend their lives in factory farms; we show what it’s like to be crammed into crates so small the sows can’t even turn around. And we don’t ask our constituents to make over an entire marketplace in one day; we enlist their help in converting one farmer, one supplier, and one retailer at a time.

This combination of logic and compassion, along with a strategy for “shrinking the change” down to feasible steps, is an exceptional recipe for progress in any arena, according to bestselling author Dan Heath, the keynote speaker at The HSUS’ Animal Care Expo in Nashville –  the nation’s largest gathering of animal welfare professionals. “Big problems are rarely solved with commensurately big solutions. Instead, they are most often solved by a sequence of small solutions, sometimes over weeks, sometimes over decades,” writes Dan and his brother Chip Heath in their groundbreaking book, “Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.”

It’s not enough, the Heaths say, to speak to a person’s rational side (by simply citing the numbers of animals euthanized as a result of low spay/neuter rates, for example). And it’s not enough to appeal to their emotions (showing an image of an animal being euthanized, without providing a broader context of the numbers of homeless animals subjected to the same fate). To truly make a change, they argue, you have to do both.

And to make it possible for someone to act on what they’ve learned, the Heaths add a third ingredient – the need to “shape the path,” or tweak the environment. In one inspiring example from the child welfare movement, they describe the efforts of Jerry Sternin, sent to Vietnam by Save the Children to fight malnutrition for six months. With few resources and little time, Sternin made a lasting impact that eventually bettered the lives of more than two million people.

His method? Rather than focusing on the intractable problems identified by previous researchers – poverty, sanitation, ignorance about nutrition – Sternin found the bright spots and sought to mimic them. In this case, that meant examining a small number of families with healthy children and finding out what they did differently. The answer, he discovered, was surprisingly simple: the mothers were giving the children smaller meals more frequently and feeding them two additional, easily accessible, nutrient-rich ingredients. Before long, Sternin had recruited those mothers to start cooking classes for their neighbors, launching a homegrown answer to what had previously been perceived as a global problem.

As we approach the opening of Animal Care Expo tomorrow, I can’t help but think of how much our outreach program for pet owners exemplifies this model for change. For years, the animal protection movement sounded the alarm about high euthanasia numbers, low spay/neuter rates, and what some deemed “irresponsible” pet ownership. While our collective efforts – on both the national level and in local animal shelters – did indeed drive down euthanasia numbers, at a certain point over the past few years we began to realize that making a broader impact would require an entirely new approach.

Enter Pets for Life, a research-based initiative built on the principle that many people would care better for their pets if only they had the resources. Dismantling years of assumptions about people’s motivations, our research team concluded there was something else afoot: Many underserved areas are not just food deserts without good grocery stores, but also veterinary deserts without places for people to bring their animals for care and services.

By “shaping the path,” literally to their doorsteps – bringing the clinics directly to people and the animals they want to help – we’ve reached thousands of caring individuals in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia who would do anything for their animals if given the chance. Through our mentoring program that trains local groups to implement the model in other cities nationwide, we’ll reach thousands more.

At Expo, we’ll be spreading the word again about this game-changing program – and sharing other forward-thinking ideas with some of the pet welfare field’s brightest minds. We are lucky to be joined in these conversations by Dan Heath, whose book is a tool for anyone who wants a truly practical guide to changing the world, one step at a time.

When Rick Berman of the front group Center for Consumer Freedom isn’t shilling for liquor interests, junk food peddlers, or the tanning bed industry, he’s cuddling up to a wide variety of sectors causing harm to animals. He’s got a big following among cockfighters, seal clubbers, puppy millers, factory farmers, and others. Their websites and social media accounts go aflutter and atwitter when he trots out his false framing of The HSUS and our work. He’s their hero.

Recently, Berman took a trip to Manitoba, Canada, to try to drum up support among industrial pig farmers to fight The HSUS on the gestation crate issue. He rolled out his standard myths, hoping for another contract from yet another animal use group to run silly ads or videos, or to write more blogs about The HSUS.

How successful was he? About two weeks after Berman left the prairie province, the Canada Retail Council and the eight largest supermarket chains in Canada – Walmart Canada, Costco Canada, Metro, Loblaw, Safeway Canada, Federated Co-operatives, Sobeys and Co-op Atlantic – announced that they will phase out their procurement of pork from operations that confine sows in crates for the duration of their pregnancies.

A writer with the Western Producer, an agriculture trade journal, said after the announcement, “the gestation stall debate is done.”

It’s a familiar pattern of failure for Berman. He’s spent millions fighting our campaigns, including our ballot measures in Arizona (crates for pigs and calves), California (crates and cages for various farm animals), and Missouri (puppy mills). We won them all.

In addition to his tobacco industry connections, Berman’s biggest claim to fame, before he launched his brand attack against The HSUS years ago, was his connection to the food industry. What does the record show? In the United States, during the last 14 months, The HSUS has opened up discussions with more than 50 major food retail companies – the biggest names in the business – from McDonald’s to Denny’s, Kroger and Cracker Barrel – that resulted in announcements that these companies were rejecting gestation crates. In the area Berman had his best contacts, we’ve had our best results.

However, I would say he’s done pretty well for himself in the process. In one year, for just one of his spider web of “non-profit” front groups, Berman’s for-profit PR firm took in 92 percent of all revenue.

We presented that information, and lots more to the IRS some months ago, and a former director of the IRS’s charitable organizations division called it an abuse of the tax code. Charity Navigator, which gave The HSUS its highest score, recently took the unprecedented step of issuing donor advisories for all of Berman’s “charities,” which appear to not have sheltered one person, fed one animal, nor provided any social service whatever.

The HSUS has its adversaries – that’s the price of taking on the biggest problems for animals. But when the major mouthpiece for your opponents is a guy so widely discredited by the media, so transparently unethical, and so publicly identified as a mercenary defender of corporate cruelty, that’s a pretty good framing opportunity for us. What amazes me is that any trade association or industry lining up against The HSUS would ever pay a guy like this, because if their goal is to halt our progress, they’re sure not getting their money’s worth.

The animal protection movement is blessed to have so many talented people determined to make this world better for animals, and committed to taking intentional actions to make it a reality. But in any major social movement there will also be a few truly matchless figures whose ability to move the agenda is deserving of special recognition. That’s the case with Henry Spira (1927-1998), the pioneering animal advocate of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, whose advocacy resulted in major corporations joining with animal protectionists to achieve humane reforms. Henry thought big and dreamed big, and when it comes to our own corporate policy work at The HSUS, we’re cut from the same cloth.

Henry had a particular approach that drew upon his long experience in other movements. He knew how and when to apply pressure, and he operated from the premise that it was not just desirable but essential to ensure that the major institutions he engaged with came away feeling proud and convinced about the rightness of the reforms they had embraced. 

Not long ago, we joined with some of Henry’s close friends at Animal Rights International, the group he founded, to establish the Henry Spira Humane Corporate Progress Awards. These awards acknowledge corporations, individual business leaders, and other innovators and entrepreneurs for their contributions to the advancement of animal welfare. It is “conscious capitalism” put into practice. 

It is our hope that the awards will inspire many others to help build their piece of the humane economy, which I talk about in my book, “The Bond.” The awards recognize the critical role the marketplace plays in addressing animal issues and reinforce The HSUS’ commitment to the integration of humane principles within business and industry, a commitment we shared with Henry and his colleagues at ARI.

Our inaugural year honorees for 2012 include Aramark, Burger King, and Sodexo for working to eliminate some of the worst factory farming practices from their supply chains, and for Sodexo’s promotion of Meatless Mondays; CeeTox, Inc., a Michigan-based contract testing organization, for its work to replace the use of animals in chemical and other product testing; and the Consumer Specialty Products Association, which brokered an industry-wide agreement in which manufacturers committed to voluntarily add a bittering agent to antifreeze and engine coolant to prevent accidental poisoning of children and animals, who are attracted to the sweet-tasting liquids.

If you’d like to learn more about Henry Spira, you might consider reading Peter Singer’s wonderful biography, “Ethics into Action: Henry Spira and the Animal Rights Movement.” It’s a superb account of Henry’s life and his studied approach to animal welfare reform. Congratulations to this year’s winners of the Henry Spira Humane Corporate Progress Awards.

This morning, the TODAY Show ran a hard-hitting exposé on the American Kennel Club, revealing that the nation’s largest purebred registry group, one that self-identifies as “the dog’s champion,” is connected at the hip to the puppy mill industry. The program, as reported by Jeff Rossen, highlighted a report released by The HSUS that revealed that the AKC has now opposed more than 90 state and local bills to establish some minimum humane breeding standards for the care of dogs over the last five or so years. The central problem, also picked up in today’s news report, is that the AKC is financially beholden to the puppy mill industry through its puppy registration program. It is estimated that about 75 percent of its constituency are commercial puppy producers. The TODAY Show broadcast includes a variety of scenes from HSUS raids of squalid, overcrowded puppy mills that were registering puppies with the AKC. 

This sort of exposure – which reminds people that AKC papers are essentially meaningless to anyone interested in acquiring a dog – is helping to drive consumers toward shelters and rescue groups and to more responsible breeders as the source for the new animal in their lives. That’s as it should be. More resources are readily available for consumers, such as the Shelter Pet Project for adoptable pets, and our guide to finding a responsible dog breeder.

Diane Lewis/The HSUS

Sales of dogs in pet stores, one of the primary ways puppy millers sell their dogs, have been steadily declining as a result of our investigations, consumer education and outreach campaigns, and policy reforms. The country’s two major pet supply chains – PetSmart and Petco – do not sell dogs from breeders, and make dogs available for adoption from shelters and rescues. In Canada, Petland stopped selling puppies completely because it is no longer profitable. More than 2,000 independent pet stores have signed our pledge not to sell puppies.

Lambriar, Inc. was one of the largest puppy brokers in the country until last summer, when it shut down because of pressure from our community. And even malls are telling puppy-selling pet stores to either stop selling dogs or move out.

Some of the largest Internet sites are making changes, including Facebook, which prohibits advertisements for puppies, and eBay, which displays a warning about online puppy sales and links users to The HSUS’ information about puppy mills. The HSUS is anxiously awaiting a final rule from the Obama administration to bring Internet sellers of puppies under the regulatory authority of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to meet minimum animal care standards under the federal Animal Welfare Act.

Thirty-five states now have some regulation of commercial dog breeders and countless localities have taken their own actions against the industry. But with the American Kennel Club opposing almost every piece of legislation (local, state and federal), these changes have been hard-won.

The battle to stop cruel puppy mills is by no means over, but the work of The HSUS and millions of advocates has already improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of dogs raised for the commercial pet trade. We intend to redouble our efforts, and TODAY’s exposure should provide compelling and somewhat startling information to millions of Americans.

Watch the TODAY Show segment here: