The Humane Society of the United States, the group which favors neither humans or our society, has announced yet another outreach initiative.

This time, it’s a new “Animals and Religion” program. It is, according to their material “an interfaith program to engage religious people and institutions on an array of critical animal protection issues.”

Interestingly, the HSUS says its mission to protect animals is consistent with the “collectively held religious value of caring for creation and the principles of mercy and compassion.” After all, they say, “all the world’s religions encourage ethical behavior towards others, especially those who suffer and powerless…” and they say all animals should be the subjects of this ethical consideration, too.

Not being an expert on comparative religions, I went to an expert and outdoorsman on this one. As a professor of theology at Samford University, he’s spent a lifetime studying the nuances of these concepts the HSUS blithely ascribes to all religions. As an outdoorsman, I don’t know anyone who better embodies the idea of responsibility in all aspects of the outdoors.

“Mercy is one of the common qualities of all religions,” he says, “but the bedrock principal is directed toward others- humans - not animals.” That having been said, there is nothing in the Bible that encourages cruelty toward animals, either. But, as he reminded me, “the Bible, the basis of the Christian faith, clearly gives man dominion over all the other creatures, giving them for his care, certainly, but also for his comfort.”

Comfort in this context, meaning nourishment, clothing and other necessities of life.

One of the initiatives of this latest HSUS campaign is called Food, Farming and Faith. It, apparently, recognizes the central role of food in religious traditions and promotes faithful stewardship of animals in agriculture. Theinitiative will, they say, “explore the sacred dimensions of food in various religious traditions and highlight its vital place in community and faith.” (Parenthetically, the initiative refers to Kosher, Halal and the Eucharist)

“Relying on bedrock religious principles of compassion and care for all creation, we hope to persuade religious institutions and individuals to make more humane and sustainable food choices,” says Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States. “I encourage all people of faith to learn about the treatment of animals raised for food, to square their own consumption habits with religious principles and to advocate for improved farm animal welfare policies at the local, state and national levels.”

Typically, Pacelle doesn’t say much about the idea of kindness and compassion to humans, probably because the HSUS under his leadership has never been about doing good to people. Instead, it has shamelessly hectored humanity with guilt and fundraising efforts that would make compassion seem far removed from his leadership manual.

The Animals and Religion program is the end result of 15 years of work to “foster scholarship and advocacy focused on caring for creation.”

In fact, this initiative will be “calling on” the United Methodist and Episcopal Churches. They both have issued official statements addressing farm animal welfare and animal protection issues.

The HSUS initiative isn’t the first one to recognize Americans of faith (whatever faith theirs might be) as an untapped advocacy group. The environmental movement, in fact, has found traction among various religious groups and denominations by pushing a global responsibility for stewardship. That, they say, should include everything from global warming to carbon credits.

In the drive to push an ideology, it seems nothing is sacred.

–Jim Shepherd

San Francisco Chronicle
Wesley J. Smith
December 21, 2003

When Ingrid Newkirk, the founder of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals infamously asserted in 1986, “There is no rational basis for asserting that a human being has special rights: A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy,” few believed that she meant it literally. Surely, people thought, Newkirk and PETA understand that humans have far greater moral worth than animals.

Actually, they don’t. In fact, it now appears that PETA’s moral views have become so distorted and misanthropic that the organization sees little difference between eating a steak and cannibalizing a human being.

Here’s the story: Armin Meiwes, the “German cannibal,” shocked the world when he admitted to slaughtering, butchering and eating a man he met over the Internet. PETA’s reaction to this sickening event?` It sent Meiwes a vegetarian cookbook and a hamper full of veggie burgers in the hope of converting him to vegetarianism.

“What this man did to a German computer expert is done to other creatures every day,” a PETA spokesman explained. “The cruel scenario of slaughtering, cutting up, portioning, freezing and eating of body parts,” the actions taken by Meiwes against his human victim, “is the grim reality for more than 450 million sentient individuals (animals) that are killed in (Germany) every year.”

In other words, according to PETA, when you enjoy a lamb chop or eat a hamburger, you are acting no differently than the cannibal who butchered a man and ate his flesh.

Making odious moral equivalencies between animal husbandry and the worst crimes against humans has become a PETA trademark. Indeed, its notorious “Holocaust on Your Plate” pro-vegetarian campaign literally equates the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust with the eating of chickens.
This reprehensible message isn’t presented between the lines or done subtly in the hope that the reader will infer the comparison. Rather, it is the explicit and unequivocal theme of the entire national campaign.

First, there are the pictures. PETA juxtaposes pictures of emaciated concentration camp inmates in their tight-packed wooden bunks with chickens being kept in cages. In another truly despicable comparison (on several levels), a picture of piled bodies of Jewish Holocaust victims is juxtaposed with the bodies of dead pigs. (If the KKK did that, it would be called hate speech.)

The text of the campaign is just as offensive. In a section entitled “The Final Solution,” PETA makes this astonishing comparison: “Like the Jews murdered in concentration camps, animals are terrorized when they are housed in huge filthy warehouses and rounded up for shipment to slaughter. The leather sofa and handbag are the moral equivalent of the lampshades made from the skins of people killed in the death camps.”

Forget for the moment that Hitler was sometimes a vegetarian and that the Nazi government passed some of the most far-reaching animal protection laws of the era. That PETA can’t distinguish between the unspeakable evil of the Shoah and animal husbandry reveals a perverted sense of moral values that is almost beyond comprehension. But this matter goes far beyond moral revulsion.

If animal rights/liberationists actually believe that the meat industry commits moral crimes akin to murder, cannibalism and the Holocaust, is it any wonder that some of the less-stable members of the movement are increasingly resorting to violence to obtain human/animal moral and legal equality?

Indeed, recent violence against animal testing facilities, food processing plants, fur farms and other businesses that use animals has gotten so extreme that the internationally respected Southern Poverty Law Center — which did so much to dismantle the White Supremacist movement — has added radical animal liberationist organizations to its list of domestic hate groups.

For example, the law center reports that the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) posted a how-to-commit-arson guide on the Internet, advertised as “Your Guide to Putting the Heat on Animal Abusers Everywhere.”

Moreover, according to the law center’s report “From Push to Shove,” animal rights/liberation terrorists regularly employ “death threats, fire bombings and violent assaults” against those they accuse of abusing animals.

These tactics have recently hit the Bay Area. Bombings of local companies that do business with an animal testing firm are believed to be associated with animal rights violence. Meanwhile, chefs who plan to open a restaurant in Napa have been terrorized because they plan to serve fois gras.

PETA’s sending a vegetarian cookbook to the German cannibal as if his consuming of human flesh is no different morally than eating a pork chop and the group’s odious “Holocaust on Your Plate” campaign illustrate the twisted moral thinking that lies at the heart of the modern animal rights/liberation movement.

Rather than promoting more humane use of animals — a noble calling — animal liberationists see no distinction between humans and animals. Because of this, some are now willing to use criminal means to coerce society into accepting their views. Remember this and consider the source the next time PETA presumes to tell you right from wrong.

Author Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. He is researching a book about the animal liberation movement.

DVM News
June 2006
By Jennifer Fiala, Senior Editor

Schaumburg, Ill. — The American Veterinary Medical Association wants no part of any signed pact with the Human Society of the United States — even when endorsing mutually supported initiatives.

The unanimous decision came during AVMA’s Executive Board meeting in April, when group leaders nixed plans to send Congress a joint letter pushing issues ranging from a stance against animal fighting to promoting animal welfare in the United States.

The deal breaker: HSUS’ support of an Arizona ballot initiative to ban sow gestation stalls, a move that crosses many allied veterinarians. Although HSUS commands a powerful lobbying force in Washington, AVMA ended its budding partnership with the $100-million association in response to concern from food animal counterparts, Executive Board Chairman Dr. Bud Hertzog says.

“HSUS is helping underwrite the cost of the Arizona swine referendum, so I think there was reluctance on part of the majority of the board to sign any statement with them,” he says. “I’m sure there will be individual issues we can work with them on, but as far as having any joint statement, I don’t think that’s a possibility.”

Time to adjust

Hertzog’s stance is 180 degrees from where AVMA leaders sat in February, following a meeting with HSUS President Wayne Pacelle in the group’s Washington offices. At the time, AVMA President Henry Childers was forging a relationship with the group, known for its ties to welfare activism. Childers, who believes in creating coalitions to move common agendas, expresses disappointment the partnership wasn’t embraced by AVMA’s more conservative members.

“It’s very important that we form these coalitions, but it made some members angry and feeling hostile, especially in food animal medicine,” he says. “I think you have to give these things time. As far as sending a bill to Congress together, the profession does not feel right about it, and it could do more harm than good if you push these things.”

Lost opportunity

On the unity table were several initiatives, including an anti-animal fighting bill, a measure to add a bittering agent to antifreeze, legislation to protect captive primates and support for the Pet Animal Welfare Statute as well as the Pet Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act.

Childers reports the two groups talked about co-sponsoring bills to Congress. Considering HSUS’ influence and capital, Pacelle finds the Executive Board’s decision “mind boggling.”

“We could have done a lot of good things together if we’d had just agreed to disagree on the contentious issues,” he says. “I’m very disappointed that it’s ended this way. It doesn’t look like HSUS and AVMA will be working together in this capacity in the future.”

Taking a distance approach

It was the only right decision AVMA could make, says Dr. Tom Burkgren, executive director of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians.

“You can’t send a message to Congress showing unity with HSUS and then hold them at arm’s length on issues where we don’t agree,” he says. “You don’t want to send the message that HSUS has any role in policy-making at AVMA.”

West Valley View
June 16, 2006
Opinion editorial

By Jim Klinker

New York-based Farm Sanctuary has an extreme political agenda they hope to impose on Arizona. We’re talking about out-of-state animal rights activists and the ballot measure they want us to support in November. Their goals have little to do with protecting animals and the environment and everything to do with reducing production and consumption of meat products grown by Arizona and American farmers.

Do not be fooled, hogwash is hogwash. The hogwash they are feeding you is that Arizona farmers do not treat their animals humanely or protect the environment because of modern and safer animal confinement practices. They will play on your emotions. They ignore decades of sound science. And they smear anyone who doesn’t share their radical views, all to promote their extreme animal rights agenda.

They did it in Florida in 2002. Now they’ve come to Arizona.

Your U.S. agriculture is the envy of the world. Arizona farmers and ranchers produce safe, wholesome meat, cheese and milk for all of us. Modern animal-raising techniques are humane and based on decades of science, research and real-world experience. The reality is that farm animals have to be treated humanely or they wouldn’t produce the food you and I enjoy.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. A check with the American Veterinary Association website (www.avma.org) shows vets believe the way animals are raised in Arizona today is humane, safe and does not put the animal under stress. Add to that, our one large hog operation targeted by the liberation radicals has a clean environmental bill of health from our state Department of Environmental Quality. The activists’ initiative here in Arizona is a solution in search of a problem.

Yesterday’s farmers had to deal with extreme cold, unbearable heat, unsanitary conditions and animals fighting for food and water, often harming one another. Today in Arizona, producers provide housing that protects their animals from extreme weather. Farm animals are fed diets designed by nutrition specialists. Their water is kept clean and their facilities are constantly washed and sanitized. They are under constant veterinary care and supervision.

The result: the safest, highest quality and most desirable food products in the world are available to American consumers for a reasonable price.

Unfortunately for Arizona voters, none of these facts matter to groups like Farm Sanctuary and other fringe groups like PETA and the Animal Liberation Front. Their national political effort is to impose their no-meat lifestyle on you and me. These groups are some of the largest, cash-rich organizations in the country and they will stop at nothing.

In Florida’s 2002 election, they duped voters into granting constitutional rights to pigs. Pigs! Farm Sanctuary helped bankroll the Florida campaign illegally. The group was charged with 210 counts of campaign fraud and paid a $50,000 fine. The initiative shut down the only two hog farms in the state, both family operated. So much for their claim they are protecting the small family farm.

The radical groups’ agenda is to spread this initiative across the country, state-by-state. It won’t take too many states before livestock production is reduced in the U.S. and the food we eat is coming from outside our borders, largely out of sight of our U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors.

We believe when Arizona voters know the facts, they will vote ‘NO’ on this farm animal liberation hogwash, sending a signal to the animal rights activists that they do not have the right to buy an election and tell us we shouldn’t enjoy meat at our dinner table.

For more information, go to www.azFarmersRanchers.com.

Jim Klinker is executive secretary of the Arizona Farm Bureau Federation and chairman of the Campaign for Arizona Farmers and Ranchers.

The Arizona Republic
3/26/06
Jacqueline Salmon (Washington Post)

WASHINGTON - The Louisiana attorney general has launched inquiries into two of the country’s best-known charities, the American Red Cross and the Humane Society of the United States, after receiving complaints that they misused some of the millions of dollars they raised in the fall to help the human and non-human victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Attorney General Charles C. Foti Jr. plans to announce Monday that he is looking into allegations that Red Cross volunteers diverted money and supplies meant for hurricane victims in New Orleans, spokeswoman Kris Wartelle said. And the Attorney General’s Office has begun an inquiry into whether the Humane Society spent the money it raised after Hurricane Katrina appropriately.

The Red Cross said Saturday that it has dismissed three of its volunteers who had been involved in food and shelter operations in the stricken city after the storm.

The volunteers “have been relieved of their duties” after it was determined that “allegations involving waste and abuse were substantial enough to warrant their immediate removal,” said a senior Red Cross official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He said the organization expects to refer its findings, including possible criminal activity, to law enforcement agencies.

Such controversies over how non-profit organizations have used the more than $3 billion raised from the American public for the Katrina relief effort are severely damaging public confidence in charities, Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University, said Saturday.

Trust in charities, which dropped sharply after the Sept. 1, 2001, terrorist attacks when questions arose over how billions raised to help victims was spent, has dropped further since Hurricane Katrina, Light said. More than 40 percent of the American public has “no confidence or not much confidence” in U.S. charities, Light said, compared with about one-third who said they lacked such trust before Katrina struck.

Foti’s examination of Katrina charities might extend beyond the Humane Society and the Red Cross, which is also under investigation by the Senate Finance Committee.

Wartelle said her office is looking into complaints lodged against a number of charities that raised money for Katrina victims, although it has opened only these two formal inquiries.

“In general, the Attorney General’s Office is very concerned about the number of charities that raised money for the Katrina disaster,” she said. Often in disasters, “the money doesn’t necessarily go to the people” affected.

On Saturday, Red Cross volunteer Jerome Nickerson Jr., a Baltimore lawyer who was asked by the Red Cross in the fall to team with another volunteer to investigate complaints of misuse of supplies and cash, said he found numerous problems in the disaster-relief operation.

He said they found “rogue warehouses” filled with Red Cross supplies that they believed were being sold. Also, some disaster staffers were ordering suspiciously large volumes of such supplies as cooking oil, coffee and canned food from Red Cross warehouses for areas in which they weren’t needed.

In the case of the Humane Society, Wartelle said her office is in the initial phase of fact-finding regarding for what purpose the money was raised and whether it was used for the intended purpose. She declined to identify the charity, but Humane Society officials confirmed that it was their organization.

Humane Society officials said they are cooperating with Foti’s inquiry, but they believe they have done nothing wrong.

CNN
5/19/05
From Terry Frieden

Officials:Extremests pose serious threat

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Violent animal rights extremists and eco-terrorists now pose one of the most serious terrorism threats to the nation, top federal law enforcement officials say.

Senior officials from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms (ATF) and Explosives told a Senate panel Wednesday of their growing concern over these groups.

Of particular concern are the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF).

John Lewis, the FBI’s deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, said animal and environmental rights extremists have claimed credit for more than 1,200 criminal incidents since 1990. The FBI has 150 pending investigations associated with animal rights or eco-terrorist activities, and ATF officials say they have opened 58 investigations in the past six years related to violence attributed to the ELF and ALF.

In the same period violence from groups like the Ku Klux Klan and anti-abortion extremists have declined, Lewis said.

The ELF has been linked to fires set at sport utility vehicle dealerships and construction sites in various states, while the ALF has been blamed for arson and bombings against animal research labs and the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry.

No deaths have been blamed on attacks by those groups so far, but the attacks have increased in frequency and size, said Lewis.

“Plainly, I think we’re lucky. Once you set one of these fires they can go way out of control,” Lewis said.

ATF Deputy Assistant Director Carson Carroll agreed with Lewis’ assessment.

“The most worrisome trend to law enforcement and private industry alike has been the increase in willingness by these movements to resort to the use of incendiary and explosive devices,” he said.

The FBI also identified a British-based group, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, as a U.S. terror threat. The group targets Britain’s Huntingdon Life Sciences Laboratory, which has an American facility in East Millstone, New Jersey.

Last year a federal grand jury indicted seven people identified as members of the group on charges they vandalized company property and harassed lab employees and customers.

Inhofe alleges PETA link

Senate Environment Committee Chairman James Inhofe estimated the cost of damages from militant environmental and animal rights supporters at more than $110 million in the past decade.

“Just like al Qaeda or any other terrorist movement, ELF and ALF cannot accomplish their goals without money, membership and the media,” the Republican senator from Oklahoma said.

Inhofe said there was “a growing network of support for extremists like ELF and ALF,” and he singled out People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for giving money to members of both groups.

PETA claims more than 800,000 members. Its president, Ingrid Newkirk, declined to appear at the hearing, but general counsel Jeffrey Kerr denied Inhofe’s allegation in a written statement.

“PETA has no involvement with alleged ALF or ELF actions. PETA does not support terrorism. PETA does not support violence,” Kerr said.

“In fact PETA exists to fight the terrorism and violence inflicted on billions of animals annually in the meat, dairy, experimentation, tobacco, fur, leather, and circus industries.”
Skepticism from some

Some committee members have expressed skepticism over the high level of concern toward environmental and animal rights extremists.

“The Department of Homeland Security spends over $40 billion a year to protect the home front,” Sen. Frank Lautenberg said. After listing al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah, the Democrat from New Jersey wanted to know who else the law enforcement agencies considered terrorists: “Right to Life? Sierra Club?”

Lautenberg declared himself “a tree hugger.”

And Sen. James Jeffords also issued a statement expressing doubt about the target of concern.

“Congress can’t do much about individual extremists committing crimes in the name of ELF or ALF, but we can act to significantly enhance the safety of communities across the nation,” the independent from Vermont wrote.

“ELF and ALF may threaten dozens of people each year, but an incident at a chemical, nuclear or wastewater facility would threaten tens of thousands.”