Humane Watch - keeping an eye on HSUS

If you haven't read Chuck Jolley's article Five Minutes With David Martosko & RICO, The HSUS Dog, you're missing the update on the newest HSUS adversary, HumaneWatch.org.  HumaneWatch.org has been instituted by the Center for Consumer Freed (CCF).  Jolley spoke with David Martosko, Director of Research at the CCF, about the who, what, where, when and why's of HumaneWatch.org.

Q:Last week, CCF launched www.humanewatch.org which got some positive notice among people in animal agriculture, especially among those involved in social networks like Twitter and Facebook. What was the impetus behind developing the web site? And would you also share the financing behind it?

 A. Our faces are already on a lot of dart boards over at PETA. Remember www.PETAkillsAnimals.com? But PETA’s more bizarre tactics make it easy to convince Americans that they’re a fringe group. HSUS is a different story.

Essentially, PETA’s role in the animal world today is to make HSUS look reasonable by comparison. HSUS is smarter, more patient, and better-dressed, except for those vinyl shoes. But their long-term goals are exactly the same as PETA’s. And since they have a much less confrontational and nutty style, proving that they’re closet radicals is a much more daunting task.

When you take out ads saying PETA is crazy, no one disagrees. But putting HSUS on the same public footing as PETA—where they belong—requires a more methodical approach. So bit by bit, we’re publicly sharing the contents of our research files on HSUS. We’re confident that if ordinary people see what we’ve seen, they’ll conclude what we’ve concluded: that HSUS is just PETA with a nicer wristwatch and fewer naked interns.

The funding for this project is coming from CCF’s regular program budget. We enjoy the support of ordinary Americans as well as businesses from all parts of the food chain.

Q. You claim the site will publish “a treasure trove of information about the Humane Society of the United States, including lots of surprising documents that HSUS would rather remain hidden from its contributors.” That’s a pretty bold statement. What kind of information have you published and how did you find it?

A. What we’ve published so far is just the first trickle out of the faucet. We’ve been paying close attention, and so have researchers in many of the industries that HSUS attacks regularly. Some of them have been very gracious about letting me browse their filing cabinets. And I’ve heard from a large number of ordinary people who have horror stories to tell about HSUS. Some of them have photos and videos.

I wouldn’t want to comment on our other research sources, but let’s just say they’re not all the kind of things you can call up on the Internet. We’re doing a little bit of what the old-timers used to call “investigative journalism.”

Visit http://www.humanewatch.org/ for more infomation on how you can get involved, the latest buzz on the movements of HSUS and much more.

Until next time,
~Buzzard~