An Interview With HSUS

Andrew Jenner
Virginia Correspondent

Everyone knows the story: American farmers are getting fewer, and older, the American public becomes ever more removed from the fields and feedlots that produce their food. The net effect, often, is something of a siege mentality on the part of an agricultural community that feels beset on all sides by tighter profit margins, governmental regulations and private interest groups.

Take, for example, the Humane Society of the United States, the country’s largest animal welfare organization — the mere mention of which often dredges up some combination of scorn and disgust in farming circles.

Consider this fact: there are, according to the USDA, about 2.2 million farmers in the United States. And there are, according to its most recent annual report, nearly five times that many people (11.1 million), who gave money to the HSUS. As an exercise in understanding other points of view, Lancaster Farming spoke with Paul Shapiro, senior director of the HSUS’s Factory Farming Campaign. Excerpts from the conversation follow:

LF: What do you think is the most serious threat to animal welfare posed by agriculture?
PS: (Extreme confinement) is not the only threat, but it’s among the most serious. The top three (examples) are veal crates, battery cages for laying hens and gestation crates for pigs.

LF: How would you describe your organization’s relationship to mainstream American agriculture?
PS: I think the perception that some have is a caricature of the HSUS. For example, look at the most publicized thing that we’ve done in the agricultural sector — that’s California’s Proposition 2 (it phases out the three confinement methods mentioned about by 2015). We had more than 100 California farmers endorsing (that) campaign. Our campaigns are designed to draw support from both rural and urban voters alike. We are supportive of raising the bar on farm animal welfare. That means working with farmers who want to help their industries move away from some of the most extreme forms of confinement.

LF: Many in the agricultural community regard the HSUS as an all-out enemy to American farmers, their livelihoods and their heritage. What is your response?
PS: To be perfectly frank, the reason that they feel that way is because many ag trade publications have gone on a zealous misinformation campaign designed to mislead people and create a caricature that is far from reality.

Just think about it — we’re the largest animal welfare charity not only in the country, but in the world. Do you think that an organization that didn’t take mainstream views would be so influential? Just about two-thirds of Californians voted for the proposal we put on the ballot ... If you look at the breakdown of the vote, we won the majority of virtually every demographic ... even some of the largest ag counties.

LF: Who has been promoting this caricature?
PS: Feedstuffs plays a big role in it, as do other publications. (That publication) regularly engages in vilifying tactics. It (recently) published an article comparing our president, Wayne Pacelle, to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. When you have the largest agribusiness trade journal in the country comparing the HSUS’s president to Hitler and Mussolini, does anybody think that’s really appropriate?

LF: What are some areas of common ground between the HSUS and the farmer who raises livestock in the conventional manners of which you disapprove?
PS: Some common ground is the fact that many farmers are uneasy with systems of confinement that prevent animals from turning around or extending their limbs for their entire lives. Simply because people are farmers doesn’t mean they approve of every practice that’s engaged in by every farmer. Farming is a dynamic sector. Things change, and we can continue raising the bar. When it comes to animal welfare, the bar needs to be raised as far as certain kinds of confinement are concerned.

LF: How do you help farmers correct perceived “problems” with their animal husbandry practices?
PS: By working with retailers to drive demand away from the more inhumane practices and toward better practices. For example, take eggs. Just four years ago, only 2 percent of eggs sold in the country were cage-free. Now, that’s about 6 percent, and a lot of that has to do with our work moving retailers to cage free producers.

LF: But does that help the farmer?
PS: You’d have to ask them. Of course, the profit margins on cage-free eggs tend to be greater than on cage-raised eggs, so you’d imagine (it does help the farmer).

LF: Does the HSUS fund research to find alternatives to the production systems that you condemn?
PS: We’re not an academic institution. We are supportive of research, but at the same time, agriculture has tremendous sources of research funding — through the USDA, Extension Service, and many (other) institutions. The problem is that much of that research in the past has been devoted to making production more economically efficient, (and) less focused on improving animal welfare.

At the same time, it’s not a mystery to producers how to raise these animals without confinement … Millions and millions of laying hens are raised without confinement. A third of today’s veal calves in the U.S. are raised without crates. The question is just whether there’s a will to move toward these higher animal welfare, higher food-safety systems.

LF: One of the greatest challenges for farmers today is profitability. What do you say to those who feel that abandoning the farming practices the HSUS opposes is too expensive?
PS: The egg industry’s own economic analysis demonstrates that it costs producers less than a penny per egg more to convert to and produce cage free eggs.

LF: Do you offer financial help to farmers interested in enacting HSUS recommendations for humane animal agriculture?
PS: No, primarily because it’s not the type of organization we are. More importantly, we work with retailers to drive them toward producers who are raising the bar with regard to animal welfare.

LF: Many farmers feel crushed by increasing regulation of their industry, and say it threatens to drive them out of business. What will happen if, in lobbying for increased regulation of animal welfare, the HSUS puts farmers — who feed everyone in the country — out of business?
PS: Let me address the very premise of that. Farmers may indeed may be subject to regulations related to the environment, farm safety and worker safety, but there really is nearly no regulation when it comes to treatment of animals on the farm.

When we talk about a crushing burden of regulation, there is next to none as far as animal welfare is concerned. I don’t think that requiring the farm animals (to have) the mere ability to turn around and extend their limbs is as apocalyptic as a scenario as you’re presenting … I think it’s divorced from reality.

LF: Many farmers feel moral obligation to provide food for a growing population. Can that be reconciled with the goals of your factory farming campaign?
PS: We’re not against technology. We’re against systems that cause an enormous amount of animal suffering. We support the use of technology.

(With laying hens, for example), we’re talking about modern, 21st-century, technologically-advanced cage-free systems that allow the birds to engage in more of their normal behaviors. To be honest, these are still industrialized systems — and they are realistic. We have 275 million egg-laying hens in the country, most of whom are in cages. We also have billions of broiler chickens, all of whom are cage free. Who would say, “we can’t have the 275 million egg laying chickens cage-free as well?”

LF: What are your personal dietary preferences?
PS: I’m a vegetarian, for a variety of reasons. Animal welfare is one of them. Personal health is another. Concern about global warming is another. I think that one of the important aspects of our campaign, (though), is it’s attractive to both vegetarians and meat-eaters. Whether we eat meat or not, all of us can agree that animals who are raised for food should be able to turn around and extend their limbs.

LF: Do you or any other senior staff members of your organization have agricultural degrees?
PS: Yes, some do. One of our top consultants is Dr. Sara Shields, who received her Ph.D. in animal science from U.C. Davis, with a special focus on poultry behavior and health. Michael Greger, MD, is our director of public health and animal agriculture. He’s an expert on the public health implications of various animal agriculture systems. Dr. Andrew Rowan used to teach at Tufts veterinary school. He’s a Ph.D. expert on farm animal welfare.

LF: Do you or any of your colleagues own or operate farms?
PS: Not to my knowledge.

LF: Looking 10, 20, or 50 years into the future, what is your ideal vision for the state of animal agriculture in America? Do you think your goals are realistic?
PS: It’s hard to look that far into the future… [but] I wouldn’t be surprised if by that time, for example, we had a lot of lab-grown meat production. That doesn’t seem that big a stretch of the imagination.

I think that clearly, a few (other) things will be different. Systems that restrict animals’ ability to engage in very basic movement — standing up, laying down, turning around, moving their limbs —will be phased out. I think that we’re likely also to see a change in poultry slaughter methods, away from live shackling, where poultry are hung upside down while still fully alive and conscious. I think that we are also likely to see other types of cruelty to animals (phased out), like force-feeding in the foie gras industry, which forces animals to consume far more food that they ever would.

LF: Why is that?
PS: The vast majority of Americans oppose (these practices). An American Farm Bureau Federation-funded poll found in 2007 that 75 percent of Americans would vote for a law in their state that would require better treatment of farm animals.

Most Americans are unfamiliar with (current confinement practices). The more they learn, the greater their concern is, so we’re going to keep informing Americans about what happens to animals on these operations.

LF: What are your goals for the future relationship between the animal welfare movement and the farming community?
PS: There’s a large number of people in the agricultural community who know that we can do better, and who want to work with the Humane Society to raise the bar. I think that rather than vilifying the HSUS, the agricultural community’s leaders should recognize that the requests that we are making for animal welfare are requests that are supported by the vast majority of their customers. The time is now to start working to address and correct these problems that most Americans (feel), and an abundance of science demonstrates, are very serious.

LF: Anything else you’d like to say to the readership of Lancaster Farming?
PS: As with any two groups, the agricultural community and the humane community may at times need to respectfully agree to disagree, but that doesn’t mean we’ll never be able to agree to agree. I think that there are a number of common ground issues that we can agree to agree on, including moving away from extreme confinement systems that don’t allow animals the ability to engage in normal behavior.