Author Archives: HWI_Admin

Maternity Pens: Lipstick on a Tortured Pig

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Who asked the sow if she wanted to turn around?Imagine spending your life crammed into a space about as big as an airline seat. Imagine not being able to turn around, to roll over, or to stretch your limbs comfortably. Imagine being so frustrated and stressed by being forced to live like this that you bite the bars of your cage (because that’s the only thing you can get to) until your mouth bleeds. Imagine the suffering… For millions of pigs in gestation crates, this is not make-believe. It’s how they are forced to spend most of their lives, day in, and day out, for months at a time. As you may already know, gestation crates are intensive confinement systems used in hog farming. They’re used to restrain a pregnant sow until she gives birth. Gestation crates typically measure 2 x 6.6 feet, barely larger than the sow. Since the purpose of a factory farm sow is to produce litter after litter, as often as possible, this is where she will spend most of her life — until the final few months when she is fattened for the walk to the slaughterhouse floor. Agricultural industry groups attempt to defend the cruelty of gestation crates by claiming that they are superior to group housing. But the research does not support their point of view. In fact, agricultural expert Temple Grandin unambiguously rejects gestation crates:
We’ve got to treat animals right, and gestation stalls have got to go… Confining an animal for most of its life in a box in which it is not able to turn around does not provide a decent life.
In industrial agriculture, profit is paramount. Factory farmers prefer gestation crates because they are cheaper and easier to work with than alternative methods, such as group housing. The well-being of the sow is only a concern insofar as keeping the animal alive, and the psychological and physical trauma is irrelevant, as long as the meat is marketable. Yet consumer sentiment is firmly against gestation crates. Two thirds of California voters chose to ban intensive confinement systems. And voters have gotten their representatives to ban gestation crates in Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Michigan, Rhode Island, Oregon, and Ohio. And, more and more, retailers and wholesalers are listening. Hundreds of food product producers and food buyers are eliminating gestation crates from their supply chains, including ConAgra, Aramark, Costco, Sysco, Sodexo, Safeway, Kroger, Target, Applebee’s, IHOP, General Mills, Kraft Foods, Campbell Soup Co., Hillshire Farms, Jack in the Box, McDonald’s, Denny’s, and many more. In April of 2013, every leading Canadian retailer signed onto an agreement to eliminate gestation crates. Even companies that once paid Richard Berman to shill for them are paying attention. Former Berman financer, Wendy’s, is abandoning gestation crates and moving to more humane production methods. But Big Ag is not listening. Big Ag, stubbornly resistant to the winds of change, wants to cling to outmoded, inhumane methods of production in the face of impending reforms. They refuse to even try to change. Instead, they plan to change the way we think about the suffering of sows in gestation crates. How? By reframing the issue. By putting lipstick on a tortured pig. Richard Berman has been spending a great deal of time with pork producers, urging them to rally the troops and defend against animal welfare. The first phase of Berman’s strategy is a campaign to whitewash the cruelty of gestation crates, starting with the name. He suggests “maternity pens,” a warm and fuzzy name for a decidedly cold, harsh practice. The goal is to frame gestation crates as loving, nurturing environments, and to downplay the reality of pressure sores and bloody concrete. It is, in a word, hogwash. You can stop him. When you see the misleading term “maternity pens”, make sure everyone reading understands who is behind the propaganda, and what it defends: the cruel, lifelong confinement of sensitive and intelligent animals in a claustrophobic cage. Berman’s campaigns rely on ignorance to spread. Counter them with the facts. For more on gestation crates:

Charity Watchdog Issues Donor Advisory for Center for Consumer Freedom

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After evaluating Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) tax returns, Charity Navigator has taken the extraordinary step of issuing a Donor Advisory. The Donor Advisory states that “the majority of the Center for Consumer Freedom’s program expenses are being directed to its CEO Richard Berman’s for-profit management company, Berman and Company.” As readers of this site and our Facebook page know, Richard Berman is also the mastermind behind the anti-animal welfare group, HumaneWatch. Charity Navigator has something to say about HumaneWatch, too:
…out of total program expenses of $2.4 million, $1.7 million is going directly to Berman and Company. The document (IRS Form 990) also revealed that program expenses were for ‘maintaining a dynamic website’ and ‘founding humanewatch.org’ when all of the money was given to Berman and Company (a for-profit firm). The document does not reveal how much revenue the for-profit gained from this arrangement.
The Donor Advisory then warns prospective donors:
We find such practices atypical as compared to how other charities operate and have therefore issued this Donor Advisory.
The CCF joins other questionable charities spotlighted by Charity Navigator for their conduct. These shady organizations include the “Coalition for Breast Cancer” (whose directors pleaded guilty to grand larceny, scheming to defraud and falsifying business records), “Disabled American Veterans” (a fake charity whose creator was sentenced to 10 years in prison for felony embezzlement), and Child Foundation (whose founder plead guilty to federal conspiracy charges). The CCF has yet to face criminal charges for funneling nonprofit funds to its for-profit counterparts. However, this Donor Advisory may serve to protect unwary donors who might be deceived by unscrupulous front groups posing as legitimate charities.

Breaking News: HSSP Leadership Vanishes

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Have you ever been struck by the sense that you’ve seen this all before?

In May of 2011, we reported on the frantic purge of David Martosko’s name from Berman and Company websites, followed by his abrupt and unceremonious departure.

So when two-thirds of the Humane Society for Shelter Pets’ leadership suddenly vanished from its website, the feeling of déjà vu was inescapable.

All traces of Jeff Douglas and Deborah Price have been purged from the HSSP website. As in Martosko’s departure, no announcement was made, no farewell message was given; just a wave of revisionist editing that wiped away all traces of their participation in the failing project.

If Price and Douglas have indeed fled HSSP, the group is left with Didi Culp as their sole leadership. Culp’s history of animal advocacy is less than sterling:

  • Culp is currently the subject of an ethics investigation for her misuse of the Frederick County Animal Control facilities, where she is — for the moment — employed.
  • She has publicly opposed vital puppy mill legislation like the PUPS act.
  • She has published a nearly incoherent rant dismissing concerns about animal cruelty.
  • On her pethelp.net website, Culp explains how “comforted” she was by the handling of an animal’s gruesome, fatal injury at a rodeo, concluding that “there was no sign of disrespect for their lives or actions that could in any way be considered cruel or even insensitive.”
  • According to a source at Frederick County Animal Control, restrictions on the inhumane declawing of cats were explicitly removed from adoption contracts under Didi Culp’s supervision.
  • On the HumaneWatch Facebook page, Didi declared that it’s taking away an animal’s rights if you support spay/neuter, a perspective diametrically opposed to the beliefs of most shelter and rescue managers, but squarely in line with that of many commercial breeders and puppy mills.

If two-thirds of HSSP’s leadership are gone and Culp is the last to flee this sinking ship, HSSP is an organization in profound trouble.

And that’s good news for animals.

We’ll bring you more information as it becomes available. In the meantime, we’ll leave you with this quote from Richard Berman:

So no matter how nasty Wayne and HSUS get, they won’t stop me from being proud of my contribution to this excellent new organization and he won’t be able to stop its leadership from excelling.

Berman’s contribution to this fiasco is clear… but HSSP’s leadership? They appear to be escaping, not excelling.

The Devil is In the Details

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Yesterday we examined a new organization, the Humane Society for Shelter Pets. If you’re not familiar with their high-priced campaign of deception against the Humane Society of the United States, read our previous article for the background.

The Humane Society for Shelter Pets (“HSSP”) says they have no connection to the anti-animal welfare organization, the Center for Consumer Freedom. We find this assertion a little… shall we say, less than credible?

Here’s why.

HSSP has hired Berman & Company to run their organization’s public relations and marketing campaign.

Berman & Company is a major (and very expensive) lobbying firm in Washington, D.C.. The company is the brainchild of Richard Berman, a well-known lobbyist sympathetic to the concerns of anti-social corporate interests and anti-animal causes. The Center for Consumer Freedom (“CCF”) is a major client of Berman & Company, paying them a tidy sum of $1,461,597.00 for “management services” last year — not including Berman’s salary as “Executive Director” of CCF.

The services of Berman & Company do not come cheap. And they don’t work for free. Yet it would appear that HSSP has no problem affording this very expensive corporate PR firm.

If HSSP had been around for a while, and had time to build up a substantial donor base, this little fact would be less interesting. However, in its very first week of existence, HSSP was able to afford the services of one of Washington, D.C.’s most expensive, most infamous PR firms.

Ironically, HSSP claims to exist for the purpose of helping get donations to local shelters. The presumably hefty fees they are paying Berman & Company could help a lot of shelters, but instead this supposed non-partisan non-profit has chosen to use that money to attack a major animal advocacy and welfare group.

So, inquiring minds wanted to know, where is HSSP getting their operating money from?

Veterinary Practice News covered the debut of HSSP, and dropped a clue to one possible source of HSSP’s funds:

The organization is funded by individuals, corporations and foundations that are supporters of the pet industry, according to HSSP co-director Jeff Douglas.

Which “supporters of the pet industry” would have both money to burn, and a burning grudge against the Humane Society of the US? Could it be the puppy mills and irresponsible breeders who account for more than a quarter of the pets in shelters?

Exotic pet breeders and their trade groups aren’t happy about the HSUS pointing out the dangers of having a tiger in your backyard.

Shamed pet store chains who purchase from pet mills and perpetuate the puppy mill trade have an axe to grind too.

HSSP, as is usual in Berman’s long line of nonprofit puppet websites, have not disclosed exact sources of their funding, as is common among most legitimate nonprofits. Nor do they seem to be in any hurry to do so. Which leads one to wonder: Why so secretive?

What, exactly, does the Humane Society for Shelter Pets have to hide?

Update: HSSP’s Form 990 tax returns have been released, and to no one’s surprise, Richard Berman’s name appears on the form — along with $765,000 in payments to Berman and his for-profit PR firm.