HSUS doesn’t generally pitch animal rights ideology in public. It merely goes about its business of methodically seeking to dismantle animal using industries, what I have called a process of chewing from the outside in. It is an effort that they know will take decades.
But make no mistake, it is a stealth animal rights organization. Indeed, its leaders all come out of radical animal rights advocacy groups. Now, the Center for Consumer Freedom, a food industry funded group that fights the animal rights movement, has discovered a tape of one of its former VPs spilling the beans. From the post:
In October 2006, HSUS’s then-VP for farm animal issues Miyun Park spoke as part of an “Expert Panel on Poultry” at an event organized by the Animals and Society Institute (another animal rights group). Park openly laid out HSUS’s priorities. Listen for yourself [audio available by going to link].
Here’s the transcript (emphasis added):
For all of us, our goal is to reduce the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest number of animals. We don’t want any of these animals to be raised and killed. But when we’re talking about numbers like “one million slaughtered in the U.S. in a single hour,” or “48 billion killed every year around the world,” unfortunately we don’t have the luxury of waiting until we have the opportunity to get rid of the entire industry.
And so because of that, a number of organizations including the Humane Society of the United States, we work on promoting veganism, and encouraging people to make daily choices that will positively impact the welfare of animals, and at the same time to reduce the greatest amount of suffering for these animals.
We have a very active cage-free campaign. Are we saying that cage-free eggs are the way to go? No, that’s not what we’re saying. But we’re saying it’s a step in the right direction, getting these birds out of cages so that maybe they can actually spread their wings.
HSUS is engaged in a cause—destroying all animal agriculture and other animal industries. But its leaders are usually too cagey and strategic to admit it. This was an exception. It doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, but it is still good to have.
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