HumaneWatch vs. Vegans

Have you been duped into clicking “Like” on HumaneWatch’s Facebook group?

HumaneWatch regularly purchases Facebook ads featuring cute puppies and kittens in an attempt to deceive animal lovers and inflate their Facebook membership.

Most people don’t explore the group after clicking the “Like” button. If they did, they’d find that HumaneWatch is not what they claim to be.

The Center for Consumer Freedom’s “About Us” page has the following FAQ entry:

Everyone should have the right to make his or her own choices about what to eat and drink… We respect your personal choices, and we expect the same in return.

If that’s true, why are their pages full of attacks demonizing vegans?

The answer is that the cornerstone of the HumaneWatch smear campaign is to persuade Americans that vegans are insane extremists intent on outlawing the consumption of meat. The concerns of animal protection charities and vegan groups overlap in many areas — notably factory farm abuses. If HumaneWatch can convince the public that veganism is a crazy, radical lifestyle, it will be easier to convince them that animal protection is a crazy, radical attempt to control what people eat.

CCF’s website is peppered with cartoons attacking vegans. They rarely miss an opportunity to combine the words “vegan” with “radical” or “extremist”. Respected studies advocating eating less red meat are ignored in favor of discredited studies stating that vegan diets kill children, or reports sponsored by beef marketing groups. Vegans are invariably portrayed in the worst possible light when HumaneWatch and CCF do the reporting.

And it’s all part of their campaign to defend animal cruelty.

The fact is that the goal of animal protection charities like HSUS and ASPCA is to eliminate abuse of animals, not the use of animals. The legislation they promote is consistently aimed at stopping cruelty without undermining the ability of farms to operate.

And there are many farming operations today that prove the viability and desirability of humane farming. Cruelty and farming are not inextricably linked, and the only voices protesting anti-cruelty laws are the ones that profit from cruelty. Not coincidentally, these are the same voices that have supported and funded HumaneWatch.

The myth of the Vegan Conspiracy is popular with the animal agriculture industry, and the HumaneWatch hysteria feeds that paranoia and ignorance. So, despite CCF’s claims that they “respect your personal choices”, vegans are a common target of HumaneWatch attacks.

Here’s HumaneWatch’s view of vegans and vegetarians, in their own words:

I must reiterate that in the context of considering how best to raise animals for food, radical vegans in the animal-rights community are strictly outsiders. They don’t deserve a place at the debating table, because their fondest wish is to destroy the table itself.
David Martosko on behalf of the Center for Consumer Freedom, Testimony before U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry, May 8, 2007.

The Humane Society of the United States, like the rest of the animal rights movement, has some pretty lofty goals. Veganizing Americans and destroying large sectors of the U.S. economy come to mind.
HumaneWatch, Dec. 8, 2010

Personally, I will believe that HSUS and Farm Sanctuary are in favor of “humane” meat production on the day that their leaders join me in eating it.
David Martosko/Center for Consumer Freedom, Testimony before U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry, May 8, 2007.

they [vegans] would also live out of huts made of their own hair and live off whatever foods they could hand raise and forage. for something to live, in any way, something else has to die.
Dannielle Romeo (HumaneWatch columnist), HumaneWatch Facebook group, Dec. 3, 2010

PCRM promotes strict vegan diets for children — despite numerous examples of serious health complications and even death brought on by plant-based diets in childhood.
“7 Things You Didn’t Know About PCRM”, Center for Consumer Freedom, Oct. 17, 2008″

[F]or America’s self-anointed food watchdogs, Thanksgiving may as well be Black Thursday. These public-health puritans look at a holiday meal and see nothing but slaughtered animals and clogged arteries. Their solutions? Tofu, bland vegetables and unrecognizable soybean concoctions.
David Martosko/Center for Consumer Freedom, “Today, Just Tell the Worrywarts to Stuff It”, Nov. 25, 2010

Oregon State University animal science professor Steven Davis first wrote in 2002 that harvesting crops to feed vegans kills millions of animals. Research determined, for example, that mowing an alfalfa field killed up to half of the resident vole population. Feeding an all-vegan America, it turns out, would still require the deaths of billions of animals every year.
HumaneWatch, Aug. 5, 2010

I hate vegans, and vegetarians. Every single one I’ve met have always looked sickly, unnaturally thin, and they’re usually uppity about their choice of food. Every single one I’ve met always talks about how eating meat is equal to sin, how we should preserve animals, let them roam free. If we did that they’re would be to many of them. They’d overrun us. Fuck that. Get over it, and eat meat like a normal, healthy SANE person.
Henley Harrison, HumaneWatch Facebook group, Dec. 8, 2010

If your family is among the more than 45 million who enjoyed Thanksgiving turkey or is planning to have Christmas turkey, you might be surprised to learn that PETA thinks you’re cruel, compassionless, brutish and sub-human.
“Should We Go Vegetarian for the Holiday Feast?”, David Martosko/Center for Consumer Freedom, Kansas City Star, Dec. 3, 2009

I completely believe that veganism should be declared self-abuse and that AR extremism, as well as veganism, is a form of mental illness.
Kim Egan, HumaneWatch Facebook group, Jan. 18, 2011

HSUS’s nutty vegan doc resumes his ridiculous scare campaign against meat and fish…
HumaneWatch, Sep. 24, 2010

Vegans… aren’t merely political, they are also radical and extremist.
“Pica”, HumaneWatch blog, July 9, 2010

…So what, you’re a vegan, and you say that saves animals… you want to push mandates on others for the guilt you feel for being alive, you can start with yourself. I’m sure there are any number of tall buildings, large bridges, or cliff sides. Take a flying lesson and stop killing animals with your continued existence.
Dannielle Romeo, HumaneWatch Facebook group, Apr. 30, 2010

If you agree that attacking charities for pay is disgusting, that a “nonprofit” that funnels 92% of its “donations” into the pockets of one man is deceptive, and that animal cruelty for profit is never acceptable, we invite you to join us in our efforts to expose this smear campaign against animal protection groups. Here’s how you can help.

  1. Warn your friends! Click on the HumaneWatch Facebook group and look for a section that says “# Friends Like This”. If your friends are there, make sure they know what they’ve joined.
  2. Spread the word. Our Understanding HumaneWatch handout gives a basic introduction to HumaneWatch in just one sheet of paper. Please post it to your Facebook status, distribute it at community events, or link to it in your emails and blog comments.
    Understanding HumaneWatch:
    http://www.humanewatch.info/Documents/UnderstandingHumaneWatch.pdf
  3. Join the Stop HumaneWatch Facebook group for breaking news and events about HumaneWatch actions.

HumaneWatch depends on ignorance and fear to spread its hateful message. By exposing their anti-animal agenda, you can help defeat their corporate-funded attack on animal protection.

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