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Humane Society of the United States
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The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is a Washington, D.C-based animal welfare advocacy group. The HSUS is one of the largest animal organizations in the world, with a 2006 budget of US$103 million. 2007 saw an increase in both membership and revenues, to 10.6 million members and a budget of US$120 million.
Journalist Fred Myers and three others founded The HSUS in 1954. HSUS founders did not seek to duplicate the efforts of hundreds of local societies working to help animals, and did not intend to operate its own animal shelters.
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The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is a Washington, D.C-based animal welfare advocacy group. The HSUS is one of the largest animal organizations in the world, with a 2006 budget of US$103 million. 2007 saw an increase in both membership and revenues, to 10.6 million members and a budget of US$120 million.
Journalist Fred Myers and three others founded The HSUS in 1954. HSUS founders did not seek to duplicate the efforts of hundreds of local societies working to help animals, and did not intend to operate its own animal shelters. Instead, they decided to tackle cruelties of national scope, seeking to resolve animal welfare problems by applying strategies, resources, and solutions beyond the capability of local organizations.
The group's major campaigns target four issues: factory farming, animal fighting and other forms of animal cruelty, the fur trade, and seeks to eliminate all recreational hunting.
The HSUS publishes "All Animals," Animal Sheltering, a bi-monthly magazine for animal sheltering professionals. It also operates Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association, which provides free veterinary services for animals in impoverished communities.
The HSUS does not oversee local animal care and control agencies; instead, it provides extensive direct and indirect assistance to shelters and sheltering programs, and operates animal sanctuaries in five states.
Rationale
While determined to be aggressive in the struggle against cruelty, the HSUS founders were committed to pursuing a practical, effective course that accepted incremental improvements. When it came to questions like the use of animals in research, or the use of animals for food, the HSUS would not be an organization wedded to all-or-nothing approaches. The balance of idealism and pragmatism Myers sought to institutionalize within the HSUS proved to be an enduring legacy.
The values that shaped the formation of The HSUS in 1954 came from the humane movement that originated in the 1860s. The idea of kindness to animals made significant inroads in American culture in the years following the Civil War. The development of sympathy for creatures in pain, the satisfaction of keeping them as pets, and the heightening awareness about the relationship between cruelty to animals and interpersonal violence strengthened the movement’s popular appeal. .
The most immediate philosophical influence on 1950s era advocates, including those associated with The HSUS, was the reverence for life concept advanced by Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer included a deep regard for nonhuman animals in his canon of beliefs, and animal advocates laboring to give their concerns a higher profile were buoyed by Schweitzer’s 1952 Nobel Peace Prize speech, in which he noted that “compassion, in which ethics takes root, does not assume its true proportions until it embraces not only man but every living being.”
Myers and his colleagues found another exemplar of their values in Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970), whose writings reflected a deep level of appreciation for wilderness and for nonhuman life. With The Great Chain of Life (1957), Krutch established himself as a philosopher of humaneness, and in 1970, The HSUS’s highest award was renamed in his honor.
The growing environmental movement of the early 1970s also influenced the ethical and practical evolution of The HSUS. The burgeoning crisis of pollution and habitat loss affecting wildlife made the public increasingly aware that humans needed to change their behavior toward other living things. By that time, too, the treatment of animals had become a topic of serious discussion within moral philosophy.
The debate spilled over into public consciousness with the publication of Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation (1975). Singer’s book sought to recast concern for animals as a justice-based cause like the movements for civil rights and women’s rights.
Much of what Singer wrote concerning the prevention or reduction of animals’ suffering was in harmony with the HSUS’s objectives. Singer’s philosophy did not rest upon the rights of animals. His principal concern, like that of the HSUS, was the mitigation and elimination of suffering, and he endorsed the view that ethical treatment sometimes permitted or even required killing animals to end their misery.
The 1980s witnessed an flourishing of concern about animals and a proliferation of new organizations, many influenced by the emergence of a philosophy which held that animals had inherent rights. Those committed to the purest form of animal rights rejected any human use of animals. In this changing context, the HSUS faced new challenges. As newer animal organizations adopted more radical approaches to achieve their goals, the organization born in anti-establishment politics now found itself identified - and sometimes criticized - as the “establishment” group of record.
While The HSUS welcomed and benefited from growing social interest in animals, it did not embrace the language and philosophy of animal rights. HSUS representatives expressed their beliefs that animals were “entitled to humane treatment and to equal and fair consideration.”
History
The HSUS’s founders decided to create a new kind of animal organization, based in the nation’s capital, determined to confront national cruelties beyond the reach of local societies and state federations. Humane slaughter became an immediate priority and commanded a substantial portion of the organization’s resources. Myers and his colleagues also viewed this first campaign as a vehicle for promoting movement cohesion.
When the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act passed in 1959 only four years after The HSUS’s formation, Myers pointed out that the movement had united, for the first time, to achieve enactment of federal legislation that would affect the lives of tens of millions of animals. He was encouraged that “hundreds of local societies could lift their eyes from local problems to a great national cruelty.”
The HSUS also made the use of animals in research, testing, and education an early focus. In the post-World War II era, an increasingly assertive biomedical research community sought to obtain animals from pounds and from shelters handling municipal animal control contracts. Local humane societies across the nation resisted. The HSUS sought to bolster the movement’s strong opposition to pound seizure, believing that no public pound or privately operated humane society should be compelled by law to provide animals for experimental use.
The HSUS took the position that animal experimentation should be regulated, and in the 1950s it placed investigators in laboratories to gather evidence of substandard conditions and animal suffering and neglect. The HSUS was not an anti-vivisection society, Myers explained in 1958. Rather, it stood for the principle that “every humane society … should be actively concerned about the treatment accorded to such a vast number of animals.”
In 1961, HSUS investigator Frank McMahon launched a probe of dog dealers around the country to generate support for a federal law to prevent cruelty to animals destined for use in laboratories. The five-year investigation into the multilayered trade in dogs paid off in February 1966 when Life published a photo-essay of a raid conducted on a Maryland dog dealer’s premises by McMahon and the state police.
The Life spread sparked outrage, and tens of thousands of Americans wrote to their congressional representatives, demanding action to protect animals and prevent pet theft. That summer the U.S. Congress approved the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act, only the second major federal humane law passed since World War II.
Other broad goals during this time included a reduction in the nation’s surplus dog and cat population, the reform of inhumane euthanasia practices, and the restriction of abuses by the pet shop and commercial pet breeding trades.
The HSUS and its state branches operated animal shelters in Waterford, Virginia, Salt Lake City Utah, and Boulder, Colorado, and elsewhere, during the 1960s and part of the 1970s.
In the 1970s The HSUS would branch out into the arenas of wildlife and marine mammal protection.
Recent history
In spring 2004, the HSUS board appointed Wayne Pacelle as CEO and President. A former executive director of The Fund for Animals, the Yale graduate spent a decade as The HSUS’s chief lobbyist and spokesperson, and held a strong commitment to expand the organization’s base of support as well as its influence on public policies affecting animals. Wayne Pacelle is also a self-proclaimed vegan.
Since Pacelle’s appointment, The HSUS has claimed among its successes the adoption of “cage-free” egg-purchasing policies by hundreds of universities and dozens of corporations ; the exposure of an international trophy hunting scam subsequently ended through legislative reform ; a number of successful congressional votes to outlaw horse slaughter; progress in securing legislation at the state and federal level to outlaw animal fighting and the interstate transport of fighting implements; the enactment of internet hunting bans in nearly all of the states; announcements by Wolfgang Puck and Burger King that they would increase their use of animal products derived under less abusive standards; and an agreement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to begin enforcement of federal laws concerning the transportation of farm animals. The HSUS’s campaign to end the hunting of seals in Canada secured pledges to boycott Canadian seafood from more than 1,000 restaurants and grocery stores and 300,000 individuals. Canada's seal hunt regulations do not permit the hunting of juvenile seals, and but do allow the harvest of adults. In 2008, 275,000 out of 5.5 million seals were designated as harvestable by Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
A major test of the organization’s capacity and leadership came in September 2005, when thousands of animals were left behind as people evacuated during Hurricane Katrina. The HSUS joined other organizations in a massive search-and-rescue effort that saved approximately ten thousand animals, and spent more than $34 million dollars on direct relief, reconstruction, and recovery in the Gulf Coast region. The HSUS led the campaign that culminated in passage of the federal PETS Act in October 2006, requiring all local, state, and federal agencies to include animals in their disaster planning scenarios..
On the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, The HSUS reported that it had spent or committed $7.3 million on direct response and efforts to reunite people and lost pets, $8.3 million on reconstruction grants for 54 humane societies in the Gulf Coast region, $2.3 million on reimbursement grants to 130 humane societies from around the country that assisted in the response. The society also reported that it had committed $800,000 and $900,000, respectively, to shelter medicine programs at the veterinary schools of Louisiana State University and Mississippi State University, and $600,000 to the construction of an emergency overflow shelter at the Dixon Correctional Institute in Jackson, Louisiana. The HSUS reported that it had directed $2.76 million in in-kind contributions to the relief effort, and attracted another one million dollars from other entities in grants to Gulf Coast societies.
During 2006, The HSUS helped to secure the passage of 70 new state laws to protect animals. Two successful November ballot initiatives conducted with the support of the society outlawed dove hunting in Michigan and, through Proposition 204, abusive factory farming practices in Arizona. In 2008. The HSUS helped to pass 91 state animal welfare laws, including Proposition 2 in California.
In late 2006, The HSUS broke the story of its investigation into the sale of coats trimmed with real fur but labeled “faux” or fake. Laboratory testing found that the fur came from purpose-bred raccoon dogs in China that were sometimes beaten to death and skinned alive. The investigation reportedly prompted several retailers including Macy’s and J.C. Penney to pull the garments from the sale floor. Legislation was introduced in the U.S. Congress to require that all fur jackets be properly labeled, and to ban raccoon dog fur.
In July 2007, The HSUS led calls for the NFL to suspend Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick in the wake of allegations that he had been involved with dogfighting activity. Vick was prosecuted under federal law.
In August 2008, Pacelle appeared with Louisiana Attorney General James "Buddy" Caldwell at a press conference marking the enactment of a law prohibiting cockfighting in Louisiana, the last state to do so. The prohibition resulted from a longtime campaign led by The HSUS.
In the fall of 2008, The HSUS also launched a campaign to expose the reliance of the pet store chain Petland on puppy mills where animals are raised under inhumane conditions. However, Jessica Mitler from the USDA, the government agency which regulates dog breeders, provided the following response to the HSUS investigation: "The agency has received no complaints from the Humane Society about a particular kennel or Petland; so they have not investigated this specifically." On November 24th 2008, Petland responded to the HSUS campaign video footage of the Petland investigation by stating: “Petland is outraged that HSUS would intentionally use video footage of unrelated kennels in the report to try to mislead the general public into believing these facilities have a connection to Petland.” Another statement dated February 19th 2009, Petland stated they turned over death threats and threats of kidnapping generated from the HSUS campaign against Petland to the proper authorities for further investigation. Petland continued by asking HSUS to cease and desist in any actions that may promote malicious intent (directly or indirectly).
The corporate expansion forged by Pacelle included mergers with The Fund for Animals (2005) and the Doris Day Animal League (2006). This made possible the establishment of a separate campaigns department, a litigation section, the enhancement of signature programs likes Pets for Life and Wild Neighbors, and an expanded range of hands-on care programs for animals. During the first 2½ years of Pacelle’s tenure, overall revenues and expenditures grew by more than 50 percent.
With the absorption of the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights in early 2008, The HSUS re-organized its direct veterinary care work and its veterinary advocacy under a new entity, the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association.
Position
Animal research
The HSUS adopts the position that the "three Rs" approach of replacement, reduction, and refinement to animal testing "will benefit both animal welfare and biomedical progress." In accordance with the above, they reject animal testing on non-human primates, cloning and animal experiments in pre-college science education. The HSUS is also opposed to other genetic engineering procedures such as chimera research and its use in xenotransplantation.
Pets
The HSUS supports petkeeping and is a advocate for companion animals both within and outside of shelters. The HSUS companion animals section provides animal care information to the public, works with shelters to improve their services, promotes spaying and neutering of animals to combat overpopulation, works to end animal fighting and other cruelties, and participates in disaster relief work that benefits animals.
Through its Animal Services Consultation program, The HSUS helps local animal care and control agencies to improve their operations by providing consultation. HSUS charges animal shelters and humane societies $4,000 to $20,000 consultation fees depending on the size of the agency and the complexity of its programs.
Feral cats
While initially opposed to Trap-Neuter-Return programs, calling them "a form of subsidized abandonment", HSUS reversed their position on March 2006 and endorsed TNR as part of a multi-pronged approach to feral cat management.
Animals in sports and entertainment
The HSUS opposes greyhound racing, animal fighting, and works to limit the use and abuse of animals in certain display and spectacular contexts like zoos,circuses, aquariums, and roadside exhibits.
Animals as food
The HSUS opposes cruelty in the raising and slaughter of animals used for food, encouraging people to reduce their consumption of meat and to choose products from humanely raised animals instead of factory farm products.
The HSUS is a supporter of Certified Humane, one of the programs that aims to certify that farm animals have been humanely treated.
In February 2008, after an undercover investigation conducted by The HSUS at the Westland Meat Packing Company revealed substantial animal abuse, the USDA forced the recall 143 million pounds of beef, some of which had been routed into the nation's school lunch program.
The HSUS was a leader in the Yes on Prop 2 Campaign in California, which gained eight million votes on Election Day 2008, more than any other initiative on the ballot. The measure, which prohibits certain intensive confinent practices in agriculture beginning in 2015, passed by a 63.3 to 36.7 percent margin, winning in 46 of 58 counties, and gaining support throughout the state, in urban, suburban, and rural areas, and did well among Democrats, Independents, and Republicans, as well as among Caucasians, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Latinos. Nearly 800,000 Californians signed petitions to place the measure on the ballot.
The HSUS has also supported the Humane Stewardship Purchasing Act in the United States Congress. The HSUS has also been a longtime advocate for the elimination of so called downer animals from the nation's food supply, an reform finally adopted by the USDA in 2008 after an undercover investigation conducted by The HSUS highlighted the issue.
The HSUS dropped plans for a similar ballot initiative campaign in Colorado,after the state's governor and legislators crafted a reform package that passed the state legislature.
Wild animals
The HSUS opposes hunting "as a matter of principle. The HSUS only supports killing animals for population control when done by "officials" and supports hunting for food only when done for "subsistence" needs
Governance and expenses
A nonprofit, charitable organization, The HSUS is funded almost entirely by membership dues, contributions, foundation grants, and bequests. It receives a small amount of federal money in support of particular programs.
The HSUS is governed by a 27-member, independent Board of Directors. Each Director serves as a volunteer and receives no compensation for service. The HSUS’s financial efficiency ratios exceed the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance (BBBWGA) standards which require that program expenses as a percentage of total expenses be 65% or greater. In 2006, The HSUS’s program expenses were 79%. The HSUS meets all 21 BBBWGA financial and administrative standards. For at least three years in a row, The HSUS has received a four-star rating from Charity Navigator. The HSUS's international affiliate, Humane Society International, has a three-star rating from Charity Navigator.
The HSUS is ranked at 164 in the Chronicle of Philanthropy's Philanthropy 400.
Criticism
ActivistCash.com, a Center for Consumer Freedom website, has said that despite its name, the HSUS is not affiliated with local humane societies and does not run "spay/neuter programs or takes in stray, neglected, and abused pets." They point out that HSUS is not an animal welfare organization but an animal rights organization. In an interview in Animal People newspaper shortly after Wayne Pacelle joined HSUS, he said that his goal was to build "a National Rifle Association of the animal rights movement." A news article and interview from Cattlenetwork.com describes The HSUS as an animal welfare group. Others, from USA Today, International Herald Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle has described HSUS as an animal rights organization. The IHT describes HSUS as the "least radical" of animal rights groups. Feedstuffs, an agribusiness newspaper, has leveled the charge that HSUS is pursuing a vegetarianism and veganism agenda instead of animal welfare. .
The HSUS board ratified a set of anti-violence principles in 1991, and a statement on its web site states: “We believe that any tactic or strategy involving violence toward people, or threats of violence, undermines the core ethic we espouse” . CEO Pacelle and other officials have repeatedly condemned vandalism and terrorism in public forums, and have sought to avoid association with individuals whose speech and embrace of violence contravene these standards. In August 2008, The HSUS responded to arson attacks allegedly carried out by animal rights activists in Santa Cruz by offering a reward for capture of the perpetrators.
In 2006 HSUS worked extensively with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to ensure that pets were included in disaster planning. The HSUS has also joined with the Attorneys General of numerous states to offer rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of perpetrators of illegal animal fighting and other animal cruelty crimes.
Even so, one form of criticism follows a strategy linking HSUS staff members with individuals or organizations who commit illegal activities. ActivistCash.com alleges instances of HSUS involvement with militant animal rights groups such as the Animal Liberation Front. On December 11th, 2008, humanewatch.org, another CCF website, released a full page New York Times ad titled "Why is the Humane Society of the United States Helping a Terrorist Group Raise Money?". The ad stated "The Humane Society of the United States claim to oppose violence in the name of animal rights. But on Saturday it's helping raise money for the Humane League of Philadelphia, an organization allied with a vicious, violent gang of convicted animal rights terrorists."
The CCF has also accused HSUS of misleading fundraising pitch in relation to the Michael Vick dog fighting case. Fundraising material on HSUS's website one day after Vick's indictment states that donations will be used to "help the Humane Society of the United States care for the dogs seized in the Michael Vick case..." and that donations would be "put to use right away to care for these dogs...". It was later revealed that the dogs were not in HSUS's care and that HSUS recommendation was for the dogs to be euthanized. The donation pitch was altered to remove references to caring for Vick's dogs one week after the initial pitch.
The CCF further argues that HSUS large network of affiliates and subsidiaries allows it to "bury millions in direct-mail and other fundraising costs in its affiliate’s budget, giving the public (and charity watchdog groups) the false impression that its own fundraising costs were relatively low." According to them, HSUS’s Earth Voice International and the Humane Society of the United States Wildlife Land Trust received ratings of one and zero stars(out of four) respectively from Charity Navigator. Earth Voice International is no longer an affiliate of The HSUS, and the HSUS Wildlife Land Trust is currently not rated by Charity Navigator. The LA Times reported that based on 1997 to 2006 data in the state of California, the HSUS has a net return of 11.3% while the Wildlife Land Trust has a -70% net return.
HSUS has rejected CCF's accusations as "error-laden, dishonest, and full of innuendo and “guilt by association” smears.". The HSUS has pointed to the CCF's ties to anti-unionism, the restaurant and beverage industry, and other corporate interests that hide behind its self-representation as a non-profit public interest entity.
In 2006 the Attorney General of Louisiana opened an inquiry into the American Red Cross and HSUS after numerous complaints about funds misuse. This inquiry was part of an wide-ranging effort to insure that charities providing relief for the victims of Hurricane Katrina did not profit from the incident. Neither Attorney General Charles Foti nor his successor Buddy Caldwell took any action, and the inquiry focusing on The HSUS ended in early 2008.
The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) has criticized HSUS and other organizations who lobbied for an end to horse slaughter in the United States, stating that instead of making things better "horses are being abandoned in the United States or transported to Mexico where, without U.S. federal oversight and veterinary supervision, they are slaughtered inhumanely."
US Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer questioned the HSUS handling of the Westland/Hallmark Meat Packing Company investigation, stating that HSUS "sat on four months of production that went out into the marketplace that's now being recalled". At a congressional hearing in February 2008, Schafter took the position that a downer ban wasn't necessary. A few months later, Schafer issued a prohibition on the slaughter of downed animals for the human food supply.
Headquarters and regional offices
The Humane Society's national headquarters are in Washington, D.C. The organization also maintains field representatives in 35 states. Its international affiliate, Humane Society International (HSI), has offices in half a dozen nations and a broad range of international animal protection programs. HSI works on international treaties, animal birth control, humane slaughter education, and an end to the Canadian seal hunt.
Further reading
- Donahue, Jesse, and Erik Trump, The Politics of Zoos: Exotic Animals and their Protectors (2006).
- Hoyt, John A., Animals in Peril. 1994.
- Irwin, Paul, Losing Paradise: The Growing Threat to Our Animals, Our Environment, and Ourselves (2000).
- Unti, Bernard. Protecting All Animals: A Fifty-Year History of The Humane Society of the United States (2004).
- Unti, Bernard, and Andrew Rowan. "A Social History of Animal Protection in the Post-World War Two Period." In State of the Animals 2001, edited by *Deborah J. Salem and Andrew N. Rowan. Washington, D.C.: Humane Society of the United States, 2001.
See also
External links
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