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:

 

Yesterday, The HSUS applauded the announcement from the Retail Council of Canada that all eight of the largest Canadian supermarket chains – Wal-Mart Canada, Costco Canada, Metro, Loblaw, Safeway Canada, Federated Co-operatives, Sobeys and Co-op Atlantic – will move away from gestation crate confinement of pigs in their supply systems over the next nine years. It’s yet another remarkable seismic shift in the debate over extreme confinement of pigs, and it’s more evidence of the inevitability of global change within the pork industry.

Trade associations for industrial pork producers don’t much like the cascade of similar announcements they’ve heard from The HSUS and from major food retailers over the last year or so. Frustrated by this sudden progress, they are trying to throw up roadblocks wherever they can, and for the past year, their tactic of choice has been to try to halt our cruelty investigations by pushing for anti-whistleblower or “ag-gag” bills in several states. There are a half dozen states with such laws on the books, and they most certainly threaten our ability to investigate cruelty at factory farms and slaughter plants.

Yesterday, I posted the first half of my interview with New School political science professor Timothy Pachirat, whose recent book, “Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight,” could not be more timely. Pachirat got a job at a slaughter plant in Nebraska, and worked there for six months. He’s got plenty of insights in his book about what’s at work in industrialized slaughter plants and what’s beneath the surface, psychologically and sociologically.

Here’s the second half of the interview:

Wayne Pacelle: It was not long into your time as a worker at the plant that you were promoted to the role of quality inspector in the plant. What did you learn as a result of your time in that role?

Timothy Pachirat: I learned how great the distance is between regulatory rules and reality. I also learned how the imperative of turning a profit trumps every other consideration on the kill floor. Importantly, my promotion also allowed me to roam the slaughterhouse at will, a freedom of movement that allowed me to map, in great detail, the spatial and labor divisions of the kill floor.

WP: Early in the last century, Upton Sinclair sought the same kind of deep immersion in a slaughtering plant, and the result was “The Jungle,” which spawned reforms in the federal government’s oversight of the American food supply. Your work is not strongly prescriptive, but are there some reforms you would like to see in the near future?

TP: The best hope for change, I think, lies in bringing together the animal, labor, and food safety movements into a broader coalition. These groups have different end-goals that at times put them in tension with one another, but all can agree that industrialized slaughter as it is currently practiced is in need of deep, radical change. Rather than prescribe what changes are needed from a removed point of view, I would like to start by bringing these groups into conversation and seeing what emerges.

WP: You’ve argued that the sight and visibility of repugnant practices may not in and of itself be enough to inspire reform. What else is needed?

TP: I think increased sight and visibility are necessary, but not sufficient for the kinds of deep changes that are needed. We also need to create spaces for meaningful interactions and relationships between consumers and farm animals and between consumers and immigrant workers that are not just about the revelation of existing horrific practices but that also point to what might be possible, in a positive, constructive sense.

WP: The timing of your book is extraordinary, in light of the current effort to enact ag-gag laws throughout the nation. Are you surprised by the spate of ag-gag laws?

TP: Not at all. They point to the deep fear on the part of the industrialized animal industry about what might happen if the everyday violence against animals and workers were made public. It is a reactive move that underscores how important concealment is to the continued operation of industrialized animal agriculture. It is also a highly dangerous move that works against animal welfare, worker rights, food safety, and, ultimately, the quality of democratic deliberation in the United States.

WP: The USDA team attempted to recruit you as a whistleblower at one point. What is your assessment of the USDA’s role in oversight of animal slaughter?

TP: Individual USDA inspectors often act courageously under conditions of extreme intimidation to document individual instances of animal abuse and food safety violations. But as a regulatory agency, the USDA is deeply flawed. It is tasked with regulating the very industry it is also charged with promoting, creating perverse incentives at a structural level against enacting and enforcing the kinds of oversight that is truly needed.

Early Saturday morning, the Indiana Legislature adjourned without passing an onerous and far-reaching ag-gag bill. It was an important stymying of a bill that was an affront to farm animal welfare and the First Amendment. The Senate had cleared the bill by a vote of 29 to 21, but House Speaker Brian Bosma pulled the bill after a number of House members condemned it as a transparent attempt to deny Americans the right to see what’s happening with the nation’s food supply.

Meanwhile, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam has not yet signaled where he stands on the bill that just narrowly passed the state legislature there. Almost every major newspaper in the state has condemned the bill and there’s been a broad outpouring of public disapproval, including criticisms from the Tennessee Press Association and the Tennessee Association of Broadcasters. As I wrote last week, there was a raid on a major Tennessee walking horse trainer and figure, and it is alleged that he violated state and federal law by soring horses. The HSUS is now assisting with the care of the injured horses.

Ag-gag legislation would also impede public access to information about slaughter practices and the operation of slaughtering plants, in addition to shielding factory farms from any public scrutiny, and we can’t afford to let that happen. Timothy Pachirat’s book, “Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight,” could not be timelier. A political science professor at the New School in New York City, Pachirat spent six months working at a slaughterhouse in Nebraska. I’ve done a short Q&A with him, and I’ll be publishing it in two installments – today and tomorrow.

Here’s the first half of our exchange:

Wayne Pacelle: Working at a slaughter plant has to be one of the toughest, most morally deadening jobs there is. Did a lot of people come and go during your six-month stint?

Timothy Pachirat: The turnover rate in the slaughterhouse is incredibly high; industry-wide it is close to 100 percent and that was reflected in my experiences as well. But equally startling was the long line of people at the employment trailer each morning trying to get a job in the plant.  

WP: Why did you select the slaughter plant as a subject of study?

TP: I wanted to understand how massive processes of violence are normalized in modern society. Close to 27 million land animals are killed each day in the United States by dispossessed humans laboring under horrific conditions, and yet this massive work of violence is completely normalized and, for the most part, completely hidden from the sight and consciousness of those who rely on its products on a daily basis. What are the social, political and linguistic mechanisms at work to make this kind of massive, everyday killing possible?  

WP: In your book, you observe and explain why slaughter plants and factory farms are often in very rural, out-of-the-way places.  What’s at work here sociologically?

TP: There are economic, political, and logistical factors for why most industrialized slaughterhouses are located in rural places. What I find most interesting is the way these factors also contribute to the continued reproduction of the violence by shielding urban consumers from the realities of what they are eating. Distance itself becomes a valuable commodity.

WP: Even within the slaughter plant, there’s an attempt to hide what’s going on, and to compartmentalize what’s occurring. Why is the design set up this way?

TP: I don't think anyone sat down and said, 'Let's design a slaughtering process that creates a maximal distance between each worker and the violence of killing and allows each worker to contribute to that work without having to confront the violence directly.' Most of the architectural elements of the kill floor, including the extreme compartmentalization of the killing work, is overtly motivated by efficiency and food-safety logics. But what's fascinating is that the effects of these organizations of space and labor are not just increased 'efficiency' or increased 'food-safety' but also the distancing and concealment of violent processes, even from those participating directly in them. From a political point of view, from a point of view interested in understanding how relations of violent domination and exploitation are reproduced, it is precisely these effects that matter most.

Check back tomorrow for part two of my interview with Timothy Pachirat.

****

 

 

A couple of weeks ago, I celebrated the closing of the last Mississippi carbon monoxide gas chamber, thanks in large part to the determined efforts of HSUS state director Lydia Sattler. This week we are excited to pass along other success stories – this time the closing of the gas euthanasia chamber at the City of Emporia Animal Shelter in Kansas, and the unanimous passage of a bill in the Texas House today to ban gas chambers in the state. 

Midge Grinstead/The HSUS
After a decade-long battle, the gas chamber at the City
of Emporia Animal Shelter in Kansas is hauled away.

Our Kansas state director, Midge Grinstead, joined with local advocates and they together helped put an end to the use of this archaic practice of gassing companion animals. Midge wept at this image of the chamber finally being removed from the shelter.

Just weeks ago, the Texas Senate took an emphatic step to end gas chambers everywhere in the state (several Texas cities have already banned their use), and today the House affirmed that outcome with a 135–0 vote on the issue. We expect that Governor Rick Perry, who has amassed a strong record of animal protection as the state’s chief executive, will sign the bill in rapid fashion. Amazingly enough, just ten years ago it was still technically legal under Texas law for shelters to kill animals by such methods as drowning, shooting, clubbing or strangling. The very fact that we are so close to an outright ban of gas chambers in Texas is a testament to how far we’ve come.

In the meantime, we continue to encourage, cajole, and pressure individual shelters to remove their chambers once and for all. And next week, Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., (co-chair of the Congressional Animal Protection Caucus) will reintroduce a federal resolution condemning the use of carbon monoxide gas chambers for euthanasia of shelter animals. While we also work to end any killing of healthy, adoptable animals, we must nevertheless ensure that when euthanasia does have to be performed, it is done as humanely as possible. Gas chambers, like the one pictured here, must permanently become a thing of the past.

The more light that’s shed on the “Big Lick” faction of the Tennessee walking horse industry, the clearer it becomes that Congress must upgrade the original language in the Horse Protection Act to deter the criminal abuse that is inflicted on the horses involved, and to give the federal government the tools it needs to crack down on violators. Newly introduced legislation – the Prevent All Soring Tactics Act – will strengthen the HPA by ending industry self-regulation, fortifying penalties for violations of the law, and expanding its prohibitions to include a ban on mechanical soring tactics, such as the use of stacks and chains on horses’ feet. 

Chad Sisneros
The artificial, high-stepping gait called the "Big Lick."

Despite efforts by the Tennessee legislature to enact an ag-gag measure that would cover up abuses in the walking horse industry (that’s a story in itself), national scrutiny of the Big Lick fraternity continues to reveal widespread abuse. Last week, Tennessee and federal law enforcement officials raided a barn allegedly owned by Big Lick trainer Larry Wheelon. Reportedly, many of the 28 horses found there showed signs of having been treated with caustic substances on their legs and were in extreme pain.

Of course this would make Wheelon the second “superstar” of this industry to be exposed within the last year for cheating and for tormenting animals for a blue ribbon in the show ring. Wheelon has been cited at least 15 times for violations of the Horse Protection Act, but ironically he sits on the ethics committee for the Walking Horse Trainers’ Association, and is a AAA-rated horse show judge. It’s no wonder the horses victimized by soring are consistently rewarded as winners at Big Lick walking horse shows – with judges themselves apparently unwilling to follow the law, why would other trainers comply?

As if this weren’t proof enough that strict legislation is long overdue, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has just released the startling results of foreign substance testing it conducted at horse shows in 2012. The USDA tested show horses for evidence that their trainers or owners were putting illegal soring agents on their horses’ legs to make them step higher in the ring, or numbing or masking agents to hide signs of soring. Whichever illegal substance they use, the only purpose is to hurt a horse so badly that he compensates for the pain by walking with an unnaturally high gait. Of the 478 horses the USDA swabbed for illegal substances, 309 tested positive. That’s 65 percent of horses in random samplings at 2012 horse shows. At the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration, the “Grand Prix” for the Big Lick crowd, 76 percent of the horses randomly sampled tested positive for illegal substances. Imagine if three-quarters of the players in the World Series or the Super Bowl were found guilty of using illegal drugs. This is the corrupt, warped world of Big Lick horse competition – with many practitioners seemingly undeterred by high-profile prosecutions and widespread condemnation of their cruelty.

We’ve documented over and over the cruelty endured by Tennessee walking horses, and we’re continuing to see evidence that the Big Lick faction won’t reform on their own. Please join us in the fight to protect these horses, and open up the industry to those who wish to take part in humane and fairly-judged horse shows: call your representative in the U.S. Congress and urge him or her to cosponsor H.R. 1518. A Senate companion bill should be introduced soon.

For weeks, my colleagues and I have been sounding the alarm about a spreading threat to the animal protection movement nationwide and, more broadly, to transparency and free speech in our society – the introduction by state lawmakers of anti-whistleblower, or so-called ag-gag bills, in about a dozen states. I was in Nashville on Monday for a press conference at the Tennessee State Capitol urging Governor Bill Haslam to veto the Tennessee anti-whistleblower bill that would make it virtually impossible to conduct an undercover investigation at a factory farm or horse stable. And yesterday, I was in Los Angeles for a taping of America’s top daily talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, which will broadcast today and include my interview with Ellen.

Watch Ellen today on your local affiliate, and go to Ellen’s Facebook page to share the interview with friends, family members, and others.

In the interview, I called on concerned citizens, especially Tennesseans, to contact Governor Haslam to veto this legislation. But I also asked everyone to get engaged in our fight to protect our rights and to understand what’s happening with the industrialization of animal agriculture.

The HSUS does so many things, including working very hard to reveal what’s really happening with animals in our society – even if the supply chains extend thousands of miles from us, and the use of animals is far removed from our daily experience.  We are so disassociated from what happens to animals in some sectors of the economy, and The HSUS is trying to close that gap and to call good people to conscience.  Even if abuse or exploitation happens in a far-off place, we are morally connected to it through the supply chains that sell and distribute food in restaurants, supermarkets, and other retail outlets.

At the end of the interview, Ellen surprised me by letting me know that if 25,000 people share the interview she conducted with me, then The HSUS will receive a $25,000 donation. I love the idea of more people seeing the interview and getting this additional support so we can redouble our efforts to expose cruelty and abuse, so I do hope you’ll spread the word.

One of the fundamentals of our work is to set standards that make it a crime to engage in malicious cruelty to animals. The nations of the world should have a zero-tolerance policy for the torture of animals, and for specific types of torment like dogfighting, cockfighting and bullfighting. Animal protection efforts tend to get held back in countries where these forms of cruelty are tolerated.

Spain has always been viewed as a redoubt of bullfighting. In the face of shrinking foreign tourism and in-country support for bullfighting, Spanish politicians threw bullfighting a lifeline last February by voting in favor of plans to declare it part of Spain's cultural heritage. This plan would allow fight organizers to apply for tax breaks and other financial incentives, could reverse the bans already in place in Catalonia and the Canary Islands, and make it much more difficult to introduce new regional bans in the future.

As the Spanish government debates this proposed new law, an Ipsos MORI public opinion poll, commissioned by Humane Society International, shows that the majority of Spaniards do not approve of public funds being used for this blood sport, and that three-quarters of the population haven’t attended a bullfight in the last five years. Only 29 percent of Spanish people support bullfighting – this represents an amazing turn-around in public opinion, and is a marker of the emerging animal protection ethos throughout the world.

There is a vocal minority of bullfighting enthusiasts whose only defense seems to be that the blood sport is a tradition. This hackneyed line of argument just doesn’t hold up as a defense for any form of animal cruelty.

Every culture has its traditions. Century-old practices remind us who we used to be as a society. Traditions, however, are like the societies that created them – ever evolving, in terms of fairness and justice. In Spain, and in many other countries, popular support for bullfighting is rightfully on the decline, and the Spanish government should embrace this shift in its citizen’s values, and not cling to age-old cruelties.

Love Spain, hate bullfighting? Send a message to the Spanish Embassy >>

Forty-three years ago to the day, U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day – a day to raise awareness about the environment in the U.S. – and it’s now celebrated internationally in nearly 200 countries. It was a grassroots insurgency, with events in communities throughout the nation producing, in a few short years, a raft of new policies to protect the environment, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act.

Check out our new Meatless
Monday infographic.

Today, there remain an array of substantial threats to our environment. But one of the biggest threats that can no longer be sidestepped is industrialized agriculture. Its ripple effects are enormous, having consequences for topsoil, the purity and abundance of water, the health of our atmosphere, and the well-being of all human and animal life. 

About a decade before the first Earth Day, American agriculture began speeding up its slow turn from family-operated, pasture-based systems – with animals on the land, and in numbers that were manageable for the farmer, and for the health of the environment – to an increasingly industrialized process. So began the era of factory farming.

The emergence of factory farming has produced mass suffering for animals, but it’s also been the bane of family farming and rural communities. Within the last 35 years, the nation has seen the loss of 90 percent of its pig farmers, 88 percent of dairy farmers, and 95 percent of egg farmers as they’ve been run out of business. All the while, the remaining farms got bigger and bigger and confined more and more animals per farm.

Within the last decade, we’re finally seeing a robust counter-movement to factory farming, with animal welfare advocates, environmental advocates, and rural community advocates – including family farmers – questioning this broken system of food production and seeking to put animals back on the land.

Over the past several years, citizens and lawmakers in nine states have moved to outlaw various forms of extreme farm animal confinement. Within the last year or so, more than 50 of the nation’s food industry giants have committed to phasing out some of the cruelest practices that factory farms utilize. More people are eating local, and eating more plant-based foods. There is a strong movement in rural communities against Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs. The Global Animal Partnership and other certifiers are working with responsible farmers committed to raising animals under high standards of welfare, and helping them to secure markets.

In the end, it’s pretty clear that there’s just no way we can humanely and sustainably raise nine billion animals for food in the U.S. That’s why we are also urging consumers to eat less meat and other animal products. A number of the nation’s major environmental organizations are encouraging their members, and the public, to skip meat at least one day a week and join the Meatless Monday movement.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, raising animals for food is responsible for nearly one-fifth of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, and worldwide, we use more land to raise and feed farm animals than for any other purpose. Furthermore, the farm animal sector is a major consumer of scarce water, accounting for nearly one-third of the global agricultural water use.

Driving less, turning down the lights, and recycling are all enormously important. But so, too, is eating more plant-based foods and supporting sustainable agriculture at all levels. Our diet is something that each one of us controls. By eating with conscience, we can turn this system around, and Earth Day is a great day to make a new commitment, or to renew a commitment, to conscious eating.

Get The HSUS’ Guide to Meat-Free Meals here >>

Watch our Meatless Monday video: