Meijer Dumps HSUS Donation Scheme
Meijer is a grocer/retailer that operates in the Midwest. Recently, they offered customers the opportunity to donate a $1 towards a $5,000 goal for a donation to aid people who have pets and whose homes have been foreclosed upon.
Sounds OK, doesn’t it?
The problem is that a couple of layers underneath that bright, shiny surface, one finds the poser group HSUS (“Humane Society of the United States”) as the folks being aided by the donations. HSUS is a radical animal rights organization masquerading as an animal welfare group. From the name on, they borrow legitimacy from the hard work and effort of local shelters and the national 130-year-old animal welfare group, the American Humane Association.
The US Sportsmen’s Alliance, a hunting advocacy group, criticized Meijer for its donation plan. Meijer decided to truncate the donation period in response.
Meijer Inc. ducked Monday after finding itself in the cross hairs of a national hunting group over donations to help families and pets going through foreclosure.
The Foreclosure Pets Fund is run by the Humane Society of the United States — an organization the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance charges is anti-hunting.
I’ve noted before the problem of animal rights groups feeding off legitimate concerns of animal welfare:
This isn’t to say that the fakes haven’t gotten on the bandwagon of pushing legitimate reforms already suggested by animal welfare advocates. But their participation is best considered a form of crypsis, since they have an agenda that goes far beyond the laudable aims of animal welfare.
Support animal welfare. Don’t get conned by animal rights groups trying to disguise themselves as animal welfare advocates.
Essentially, the radical animal rights groups appear to be implementing a plan to become the only voices for animal welfare, though their aims go much further than those of legitimate animal welfare groups. The radical animal rights groups want an end to any human “exploitation” of animals, and that includes pet ownership and the extinction of domesticated animal species, as well as any take of wild animals for any reason. Eating meat is right out. Hunting and fishing are targets. Biomedical research using animal models would be history. However, selling the general public on those goals is not a public relations winner right now. How would Meijer, Inc. care to contemplate a grocery store without milk, butter, eggs, meat, fish, or any other animal-based product? How would Meijer customers take it? That’s right, no sale. On the other hand, animal welfare is an incredibly popular idea and causes people to open up their wallets for charitable giving. There’s only some much money in the animal welfare charitable giving pot, though, and those pesky folks running the local animal shelters and the AHA as the national organization for them are soaking up quite a bit of that money. If, though, a radical animal rights group spends enough money on a public relations campaign to “own” some particular animal welfare issue, they can get most of the money that gets donated by people interested in that cause, say shutting down puppy mills or, as in current events, aiding pet owners in financial straits. That money does not go to the local shelter or the AHA, and they are able to do less in making progress on those animal welfare concerns, making them appear less effective than the disguised radical animal rights groups, causing a further shift in charitable giving toward the radicals.
Many of the comments following the news item linked at the top take issue with Meijer and those against the donation scheme as unfairly depriving the people at the end of the charitable giving chain, the pet-owning foreclosed, of needed funds. They simply don’t understand how having the cash flow go through a radical animal rights organization is a problem. They note the activism and enthusiasm of these groups for specific animal welfare issues and call it “good, good, good”. The problem is that, just like a legitimate front organization for the Mafia, that’s not all that is going on. If we are going to have our established animal welfare groups, locally and nationally, it is they who need to be able to receive our limited donations, and not the radical animal rights groups who are seeking to displace and silence them.
Essentially, the radical animal rights groups appear to be implementing a plan to become the only voices for animal welfare, though their aims go much further than those of legitimate animal welfare groups.
Exactly. This isn’t a new strategy of theirs, either. They’ve been at it for almost twenty years. HSUS was founded specifically to steal publicity from the much older animal-welfare-oriented Humane Societies that exist all across the country. Rubes see the name and think they’re donating to a large-scale version of the county animal shelter, but in fact their money goes to support the agenda of the animal rights wackos.
Back in the Sugarloaf dolphin debacle in the 1990s, HSUS was pushing propaganda specifically aimed at exploiting the confusion over what their name is and what they actually do, or rather don’t do. As far as having high falsehoods-per-paragraph rates, HSUS is right up there with the antievolution advocates.
Oh, and this page was pretty interesting, too, though I would be interested in seeing the original sources for most of the quotes given there.
Yes, an interesting site, although nothing there surprises me in the slightest. I first got interested in the animal-rights controversy in 1991 or so, for many of the same reasons that led me into the C/E debate a few years later: I absolutely could not understand how intelligent human beings could take such stupid positions or be so blatantly dishonest in advocating them. Wayne Pacelle and his allies like Ingrid Newkirk were saying the same kind of things even way back then. They haven’t changed a whit in twenty years. They were dangerous lunatics then; they’re still dangerous lunatics now. The only difference is that they’ve created their own Overton Window so successfully that the one-time fringe wacko Pacelle is now considered an expert on animal abuse, fit to give testimony before Congress.
I have to admit that poli-sci is not my thing, and I’m just going on what Wikipedia says about Overton windows, so take the following with a grain of salt.
It doesn’t strike me that the strategy followed by HSUS matches that of an Overton Window. Their strategy instead seems to be that if they are seen advocating some reasonable ideas (animal welfare goals) that the public will eventually be on board with their radical ideas (full-blown animal rights agenda including enforced vegan diets for everyone, the extinction of all domestic animals, etc.). I don’t know how they *could* implement an Overton Window since that would involve inventing and introducing even more extreme ideas than the ones they used to spout publicly, and I simply can’t imagine what’s more extreme than extinction for all domestic animals, for instance. They seem instead to simply hope that the gullible public will focus on their present course of loudly taking up specific animal welfare tasks and forget the inconvenient radical agenda previously expressed, at least until such time as they have garnered enough political credibility to edge their original views back into the public light.
One can see that they are pursuing exactly the strategy stated on that quotes page with targeting California. The draconian spay and neuter laws that they are pushing have the aim of putting breeders out of business and eliminating the ability of pet owners in general to afford to breed their own cats or dogs. Trying to point out that those laws are draconian and overstep what government should be doing leads to the response that opponents want overflowing shelters full of animals that have to be euthanized, though that is certainly not the only possible alternative to what they have proposed. The anti-pit bull agenda being pursued nationwide is also a slippery slope, as further “harmful” or “useless” breeds will be targeted after they’ve eliminated the Staffordshire bull terrier, and represents another part of this piecemeal strategy of preparing the public for their radical aims.
Excellent article and well researched! The Humane Society of the United States in not fooling us anymore.
HSUS and CEO Wayne Pacelle are showing their true colors by demanding a vegan America. What one eats is a choice and should not be dictated to anyone. Not to mention the HSUS agenda of pro-extinction of domestic pets. Yes Wayne Pacelle has been quoted saying he does not have a problem with that.
HSUS is sitting on $200,000,000 in cash and an average yearly donations totaling $100,000,000. Is this money going to help the homeless and abused pets we love so much? Ha! HSUS spends more on staff travel expenses than hands-on animal care!
Get the facts! Visit their web site and look at their IRS tax returns if you want to know where donations are going. After doing the math you will be enlightened to the true HSUS agenda.