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:

View our interactive 2012 Annual Report.

Today we’re officially releasing The HSUS’ 2012 Annual Report, which pulls together the many strands of work of the world’s largest animal protection organization and bundles them together in a single place. We’re committed to transparency in the communication of our results and the management of our affairs. As you’ll see by reading this report, there really is no organization like The HSUS in the world – with program departments focused on companion animals, farm animals, equine, wildlife and marine mammals, and animal research and testing issues. In addition, via Humane Society International, there is a far-reaching enterprise extending the impact of our programs throughout the world. Our staff consists of veterinarians, wildlife biologists, issue experts, educators, investigators, lawyers, lobbyists, animal care specialists, and so many others, united in their passion for halting human-caused cruelty and providing care and protection to all animals.

In 2012, The HSUS and its affiliates provided direct care for more than 100,000 animals – making us the largest provider of direct services to animals in the country. We care for animals through the work of our Animal Rescue Team, our traveling veterinary teams, our Animal Care Centers, our Pets for Life programs, our Humane Wildlife Services team, and our Wildlife Innovations and Response Team. As with our advocacy work, it’s the most diverse set of animal care programs you’ll find anywhere. We run six animal care centers, and we also run dozens of companion animal shelters, principally temporary shelters we set up after we raid the sites of large-scale animal cruelty or neglect.

But if we only conducted rescue, we’d be failing in our mission. Our greatest purpose is to prevent cruelty by challenging legal, institutionalized forms of animal abuse. It’s this work that leads us into the domains of factory farming, the fur trade, wildlife cruelties, puppy mills, the exotic animal trade, horse slaughter and soring, and so many other areas. In 2012, we made historic progress in our campaign to eliminate the use of gestation crates on factory farms, in getting chimpanzees out of laboratories and into sanctuaries, and in exposing horse “soring” abuses that shocked the nation.

I hope you’ll carefully peruse this report in order to understand the breadth of our work and, we hope, to be a strong ambassador for the organization. The Annual Report also provides a roadmap for where we are taking society on the fundamental question of our relationship with the other animals who share our world. Thank you.

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.

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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.

As we await final action from Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam on the fate of the state’s awful and overreaching ag-gag bill (which the state’s attorney general yesterday called “constitutionally suspect” in a formal written opinion), Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder late this week took an extraordinarily hostile action on another bill we have a great interest in. He signed a bill pushed by state Sen. Tom Casperson that not only seeks to undercut the petition drive we and our partners launched to block wolf hunting, but also gives unilateral authority to the seven-member Natural Resources Commission to remove just about any species in Michigan from the protected list and open a trophy hunting or trapping season on them.

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In a coordinated one-two punch against wolves and other wildlife in the state, the NRC approved a fall wolf hunting season just hours after Snyder signed the bill into law. Trophy hunters and trappers will be allowed to kill about 43 wolves in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and that figure certainly would have been higher but for our intense scrutiny of the plan to kill members of this keystone species. There are only about 650 wolves in the entire state, and they were just removed from the federal list of species threatened with extinction, after decades of protection.

Our original wolf protection referendum – which we submitted at the end of March with more than 253,000 signatures – should be certified for the ballot, and it will indeed appear on the November 2014 ballot. We believe that if voters decide to favor our position on the ballot measure to reject the original wolf hunting law that the legislature passed, that the NRC should honor the wishes of the people and terminate a hunt. 

But it’s impossible to know how the NRC will react to our winning the 2014 ballot fight. The question now is, do we mount a second referendum campaign to nullify the law that Snyder signed and quash their attempt to kill perhaps thousands of wolves over the next decade and turn back their larger, more dangerous plan to consolidate all authority over hunting programs in the hands of a few bureaucrats appointed by the governor?

I am outraged about the governor’s action, and the actions of an arrogant legislature, which thumbed its nose at the people, and has tried to subvert a constitutionally guaranteed right to decide issues directly. But I’d like your opinions. Write me and let me know if you think we should mount a second effort to protect the wolves and to protect the right of the citizens to more directly control decisions related to wildlife protection.

As part of “Puppy Mill Action Week,” The HSUS today released “A Horrible Hundred,” a report that documents a litany of deficiencies and appalling details concerning the mistreatment of dogs at commercial dog breeding facilities. Don’t read the report if you are not prepared for your blood to boil. Many of the facilities listed have been cited by federal inspectors for violations, including dogs found freezing in the cold or left out in the sweltering heat without protection; dogs with open wounds, injuries and tumors who had not been treated by a vet; filthy conditions; and in some cases, operators who even shot and killed their unwanted breeding dogs. Most of the puppy mills in the report are still actively selling to pet stores across the country while others sell puppies online without a federal license.

Meredith Lee/The HSUS

The good news is that we’ve been calling on lawmakers to crack down on these kinds of puppy mills, and increasingly, lawmakers are responding. This month alone, Vermont and West Virginia passed bills to protect dogs from irresponsible breeding. The West Virginia measure was signed into law last week, and the Vermont bill is awaiting the governor’s signature. And today, a bill in North Carolina passed the House of Representatives; it now moves on to the Senate. Bills are moving forward in other states, too. These states join 24 others that have passed new laws to crack down on puppy mills over the last five years; more than 30 states altogether have some laws to regulate puppy mills.

Earlier this month, we learned a proposed rule that would help to regulate the hundreds of puppy mills that sell over the Internet moved forward to the final stage of the federal approval process. When finalized, the rule will require large-scale puppy producers who sell online to be federally licensed and inspected.

For this year’s Puppy Mill Action Week we also released a number of new features to help you spread the word about puppy mills:

• A new phone application that helps pet lovers find nearby pet stores that do not sell puppies. Text PUPPY to 30644 to find “puppy friendly” stores that support their local shelters and do not sell puppies (message & data rates apply).
• We also released a new video that explains puppy mills and asks consumers to do their part by pledging not to buy a puppy mill dog from a pet store or Internet site, and by always considering adoption from a shelter or rescue group first.
• A Humane Society University webinar about stopping puppy mills was offered live this week, and is now available online for free.
• A new comprehensive story, “Anatomy of a Puppy Mill Raid,” gives readers an inside perspective on a puppy mill raid from the rescuer’s point of view.

We won’t relent until the puppy mills are shuttered and only humane and responsible breeders remain. Meanwhile, we’ll continue to promote adoption of dogs from shelters and rescues as the first option – so that people can not only get a great companion, but also save a life.

I am in Nashville today for the official opening of Animal Care Expo, which will host 2,000 people from all across the country and from 40 nations. It’s the animal welfare movement’s leading training, education and inspiration conference, and I am so pleased that The HSUS brings so many people together to learn about best practices, innovations in our field, and new strategies for helping dogs, cats, horses and other animals.

It’s very timely that we’ve assembled in Tennessee, since Governor Bill Haslam will be deciding in the next few days on whether he will sign or veto an “ag-gag” law that just narrowly made it through the state legislature. Yesterday, he announced that he’s waiting to see the analysis of the constitutionality of the proposed law by state Attorney General Robert Cooper, Jr. This is an overbroad, overreaching measure, and there’s no reason for it to be enacted, and every reason it deserves a veto.

The HSUS

Ag-gag bills are part of a national effort by agribusiness groups to pass laws that make it difficult or impossible to expose inhumane and often illegal behavior at animal-use enterprises.  But here in Tennessee, the only major investigation undertaken by The HSUS was an exposure of a corrupt, suspended Hall of Fame Tennessee walking horse trainer. His abusive, barbaric behavior, and that of his stable hands, was widely condemned and resulted in numerous criminal convictions. No sensible person has excused what he did.

So the effort to pass an ag-gag law strikes a particularly false note here in The Volunteer State, since that HSUS investigation provided such an important public service by exposing an abusive trainer in the walking horse industry.

It’s also triggered a national effort to bolster the federal Horse Protection Act. The Prevent All Soring Tactics Act, HR 1518, would strengthen the federal law against soring and make it a crime to use stacks and chains on the feet of competition walking horses and horses of other related breeds that have been victims of soring abuse.

We’ll be hosting a press conference tomorrow at the Opryland Hotel to announce the outcome of an analysis of last year’s federal inspections of show horses. The results are deeply distressing, and that’s why we not only need the PAST Act, but also a new attitude within the industry to obey the law.

We’ll have an army of folks cheering on our efforts to treat animals with more kindness and decency.

When private citizens keep wildlife as pets, especially big cats and other large, powerful animals – it almost never turns out well. It’s also a potentially deadly situation for the owner or other people who must live or work around these animals. That’s why we’ve been leading the charge nationwide to prohibit the private possession of dangerous wild animals as pets.

This weekend, we helped rescue almost a dozen captive wild animals that were abandoned on a rural Kansas property. The Atchison County Sheriff’s Office seized a tiger, two cougars, three bobcats, two lynx, a serval and two skunks. The owner surrendered the animals and has been cited with 10 offenses, including animal cruelty and violations of the Dangerous Regulated Animals Act.

The HSUS’ director of animal cruelty response for our Animal Rescue Team, Adam Parascandola, was on the ground at the rescue and reported back on his experience:

We were originally contacted by the Atchison County Sheriff’s Office, which had been calling around for help after the undersheriff discovered the animals had been left without food and clean drinking water, and several animals, including a serval, were dead on the property. The Kansas City Zoo graciously agreed to provide an emergency food supply and The HSUS rushed additional food to the sheriff. The Sheriff’s Office went above and beyond the call of duty in feeding and caring for the animals while we located permanent placement for them and arranged transport.

Kathy Milani/The HSUS
Big cats were left in their cages
without food or water.

When we first pulled up to the property we could see a long row of chain link pens up on a hill. Anyone driving by would probably assume these pens contained dogs, so it was hard to believe that they actually held an assortment of large cats. I noticed immediately when I approached the enclosures that they were made of the same flimsy type of chain link I have often seen dogs escape from, and the only thing securing the doors of the pens were small, thin chains. When the tiger jumped on the wall of his cage, the whole side would bow out. This was truly a looming disaster, until the Atchison County Sheriff’s Office intervened. The conditions inside the pens were even worse; the cats were living in mud and filth. They shook their paws in an effort to remove the mud that caked their feet. Some of the shelters were much too small for the cats and they lacked any real source of enrichment or the ability to claw, climb, or exhibit other natural behaviors. One bobcat huddled in his house the whole time, and the serval hid under a plastic dome.

Thankfully we had a great team of responders, including the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association’s own Dr. Roberto Aguilar, DVM, medical director of our animal care centers. Dr. Aguilar has many years of experience treating wild and exotic animals. He jumped right in with a veterinarian from the Kansas City Zoo, which is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and a veterinarian from Big Cat Rescue, which is accredited by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries. The cats were sedated, examined, had blood drawn to assess their health, were vaccinated and had microchips inserted for identification. The HSUS staff then assisted in transferring the cats and skunks into transport trucks to begin their journey to a better life. Dr. Aguilar rode along with the cougars and tiger on the trip to Texas to monitor them along the way.

The Fund for Animals’ Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch in Murchison, Texas, an affiliate of The HSUS, is caring for the tiger, while In Sync Exotics is providing sanctuary for the cougars, Big Cat Rescue will house the bobcats, lynx and serval, and the two skunks were transferred to Operation Wildlife.

Responding to any situation where animals are suffering is heartbreaking, but to see these majestic large cats, who do not belong as pets, living in such filth and frustration was especially painful. To know these animals will now have the care and enrichment they deserve makes this one of the most thrilling and uplifting rescues I have participated in.

This rescue is also a reminder that states must take a strong stand on the keeping of dangerous wild animals as pets. Alabama, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wisconsin are the only remaining states that have no rules on keeping dangerous animals. Many other states, including Kansas, have loopholes that allow private citizens to keep dangerous wild animals for a variety of purposes. We need your help to ensure that wild animals are kept out of the hands of people who do not have the experience, knowledge, or resources to provide proper, humane, long-term care.

We are grateful that the Atchison County Sheriff’s Office took decisive action in this case and for the expertise and assistance from the organizations that helped rescue these animals.

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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.