SAOVA Friends,
The Texas Agriculture Law Blog is an outreach project of the Texas
A&M Agrilife Extension Service. It
is specifically focused on water law, oil and gas law, leasing, property
rights, right to farm statutes, and animal cruelty issues. The blog provides
interesting reading not only on the variety of subjects listed above but others
such as the Farm Bill, easements, landowner liability, and the ESA. Currently the blog is offering a series on
how to avoid and survive undercover video investigations. This three-part series was previously
published in Dairy Herd Management magazine. Part 1 covers hiring practices and
Part 2 covers farm policies and training practices. The blog can be found at http://tinyurl.com/qbvrtky
Thank you for reading. Cross posting is encouraged.
The world not only belongs to those who show up, it's controlled by the
best informed and most motivated.
Susan Wolf
Sportsmen's and Animal Owners' Voting Alliance
Working to identify and elect supportive legislators
HSUS’s
INTIMIDATION TACTICS IN RHODE ISLAND
HUMANE WATCH August 13, 2015. When is a “Humane Society” not
humane? When it launches a harassment campaign singling out a state senator.
For over a month, Rhode Island State Senator Susan Sosnowksi
has endured the bullying of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). The
radical animal-rights group has taken out full-page ads attacking the Senator,
passed around inflammatory fliers in her hometown farmers market, and accused
Sosnowski of “doing the bidding of animal abusers.” What is
Sosnowski’s offense? She doesn’t support an HSUS bill that creates
cumbersome regulations for egg production that would have harmed a family farm
in the state. Sosnowski is herself a farmer, so she most of all would
understand what’s going on here.
What is particularly unjust about the Humane Society’s
harassment is that there appears to be little-to-no evidence this bill would
actually improve animal welfare. Rhode Island’s Livestock Welfare & Care Standards Advisory Council said
the bill’s requirements are “far in excess of any standard set forth in any
state without any evidence to support this increase improves hen welfare.” In
fact, the legislation may result in worse conditions for hens with weaker
chickens being left unprotected from the pecking of more aggressive chickens in
the coop. The bill would also result in higher prices for eggs, and quite
possibly lead to diminished food safety. Research published by Oxford Journals found that the
safest housing system was a cage system that HSUS opposes.
However, the facts don’t matter to HSUS. Far from trying to
improve animal welfare, what this extremist organization cares about is
creating burdensome regulations that disrupt farming in every way possible. HSUS’s
food policy director has compared farms to Nazi concentration camps and HSUS’s
CEO has compared the treatment of animals to slavery. These guys don’t support
any kind of egg farm—cage-free, free-range, or otherwise.
For years, animal-rights activists infamously used terror tactics against UCLA’s biomedical
researchers. Activists set cars ablaze, placed incendiary devices on
researchers’ doorsteps and under their cars, and sent violent threats to
others. What HSUS is doing here obviously doesn’t rise to the level of
violence, but it’s still disturbing. Is this how HSUS donors would want their
money being used, to send some someone to Rhode Island to hassle people at a
farmers market? Undoubtedly no.
Since no farm will meet HSUS’s standard of veganism, it
appears unlikely that HSUS will stop harassing Senator Sosnowski anytime soon. http://tinyurl.com/p2gcea2
COSTCO VS HSUS
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is taking its
public relations fight against Costco Wholesale to another level. HSUS plans to
broadcast graphic footage of hens allegedly being mistreated at a Pennsylvania
supplier of eggs to Costco on a 1,700 square-foot billboard in Times Square. The
undercover footage was shot at Hillandale Farms as part of a campaign to
pressure the retailer to only sell eggs from cage-free hens. More than 300,000
pedestrians enter the heart of Times Square each day, according to the Times
Square Alliance, a group that promotes businesses in the area.
HSUS also filed legal complaints with the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleging that
Hillandale Farms, a Costco egg supplier, deceived consumers with its poor
animal welfare standards and “filthy and unsanitary conditions,” resulting in
food safety concerns.
Costco’s CEO Craig Jelinek told FOXBusiness that they’re
being unfairly targeted. Costco said in a June statement regarding the video
that there are "vigorous debates about animal welfare and laying
hens." "Some, such as the Humane Society, advocate that hens be cage
free and not confined in cages. Some advocate that cages are safer for
hens," the statement reads. “Inspections that we have conducted there as
recently as this week confirmed for us that Hillandale is behaving
appropriately. Hillandale has identified some areas in which it believes it can
improve, including process improvement and more training for its employees.”
In the Hillandale Farms statement regarding this video they
say that they have had audits by the FDA, United Egg Producers, and the Pennsylvania
Egg Quality Assurance Program (PEQAP), all of which report excellent results
for this farm. Hillandale provided copies of these reports to ABC after HSUS
sent ABC a copy of the video. “We
believe our high standards were compromised by this undercover employee, who
shot the video in a barn where he was the primary caretaker, with
responsibility to maintain cleanliness in the barns, address any equipment
issues and remove mortality on a daily basis. It appears clear that he
disregarded required operational procedures and then videotaped the barn and
flock with the intent to misrepresent Hillandale Farms. A full internal
investigation by our team and by independent outside academic experts in food
safety and hen welfare confirmed our belief – that the images in the video
reflect an isolated incident in a barn where the undercover worker held primary
responsibility. It was his job to identify and address the types of issues that
were shown, and he did not adequately perform his job requirements.” http://tinyurl.com/q843rsh
Sources: HSUS website; Food Safety News; Egg-Cite; CBS
Interactive
CHICAGO PET STORE BAN SUIT DISMISSED
A federal judge last week dismissed an amended lawsuit filed
by area pet stores against a Cook County ordinance that limits the sale of
animals from large-scale breeders. The ordinance, which was originally set to
take effect in October 2014, limits the sale of dogs, cats and rabbits in Cook
County pet stores to those that come from rescue groups, humane societies,
government-run shelters or federally licensed breeders who possessed no more
than 5 reproducing female dogs, cats, or rabbits. The ordinance was drafted to
allow an incorporated municipality to opt out under home rule powers by passing
its own ordinance governing pet shop sales. Plaintiffs, including the Missouri
Pet Breeders Association (MPBA) and three Cook County pet shops and their
owners, claim that the ordinance is invalid under the U.S. Constitution because
it violates the Commerce Clause; the Equal Protection Clause; and that the ordinance
is impermissibly vague. Pet shop plaintiffs also alleged violations of the
Contract Clause.
The Court found the ordinance is facially neutral, and any
disparate impact on out-of-state breeders is indirect and incidental. The Court
also found it implausible that the ordinance will affect interstate commerce. District
Judge Matthew F. Kennelly wrote, “Plaintiffs' Equal Protection Clause and
Contract Clause claims, which the Court dismissed in its order dated May 21,
2015, have not changed. Accordingly, the Court reaffirms its dismissal of those
claims. (See Mo. Pet Breeders Ass'n, 2015 WL 2448332, at *6–7, *10–11. In that opinion Judge Kennelly wrote, “The
ordinance does not raise equal protection concerns, even if it will not
completely solve the problems it was intended to address. Any disparate effect
that stems from the distinction between sales by breeders and sales by pet
stores is rationally related to the legitimate government interest of limiting
the use of mass-breeding facilities.”
Kennelly continued, “Defendants have offered “plausible reasons”
justifying the challenged classifications. Id. Lawmakers imposed breeder-size
requirements to ensure that pet stores bought animals from small breeders as
opposed to inhumane mass-breeding facilities. Because defendants
have presented legitimate public interests that support the ordinance, the
Court dismisses plaintiffs' Contract Clause claim”.) http://tinyurl.com/q7oelrq
MASSACHUSSETTS BALLOT INITIATIVE
Citizens for Farm Animal Protection has announced a new
ballot initiative in Massachusetts to curb extreme confinement of breeding
pigs, veal calves, and egg-laying hens. The coalition includes the
Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Animal
Rescue League of Boston, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals (ASPCA), The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), United Farm
Workers, Center for Food Safety, veterinarians and others. Although confining-cage
practices are virtually non-existent in Massachusetts, supporters claim a ban
will prevent them in the future. While previous ballot measures backed
by HSUS in other states limited the ways farmers can produce meat and eggs, the
Massachusetts measure also targets what products businesses here can sell. The measure is opposed by agricultural groups
and the food industry who say a ban is costly and unnecessary, if not
unconstitutional. The ballot question must first be certified by the attorney
general. Once approved, the coalition must collect more than 90,000 signatures
in order to qualify this proposal for the 2016 statewide ballot.
USDA ANIMAL HEALTH PANEL INCLUDES HUMANE SOCIETY VET
Agri-Pulse August 18, 2015. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has named
19 members of his Advisory Committee on Animal Health that will serve through
June 2017. The panel, which is supposed to represent “a broad range” of groups
within agriculture, includes a veterinarian from the National Pork Producer
Council, several academics and livestock producers as well as the director of
veterinary policy with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), an
animal welfare group that is widely unpopular in some circles of the
agriculture industry.
In a 2012 interview posted on the Humane Society Veterinary Medical
Association website, the HSUS vet, Michael Blackwell, called HSUS “the most
capable organization to influence our direction as a society.” When asked to
name his top priority issue, he pointed to the health of food animals
“especially as that is threatened by mechanized and industrial systems” that he
said “can and do threaten public health and environmental safety.” Agriculture
groups have criticized HSUS for its tactic of engaging in lawsuits to force
producers and producer groups to spend money on legal fees and for helping to
create legislation perceived by some as harmful to agriculture, such as the
California egg law, which increased the space allocated in cages for every
egg-laying chicken in the state. Continue
reading: http://tinyurl.com/nvf6jlu
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