On March 28, hotflash reported on a Senate Ag Committee hearing in Jeff City in which certain statements were made about the Humane Society of the United States and, specifically, the petition process currently taking place in Missouri to put puppy mill regulation to a vote in November.
Witness Dale Ludwig of the MO Soybean Assn. asserted that HSUS raises $100 million a year with campaigns such as this and that only $1 out of every $200 raised actually goes to pet care.
Since I am one of the petition carriers for this effort to better regulate mass production of puppies for profit in our state, I decided to look into who is buying full-page ads in national newspapers denouncing HSUS.
If you go to the home page of HumaneWatch you’ll find a blog by David Martosko calling HSUS every name in the book and inviting people to join the discussion. And who does David M work for? From his own page:
After the 2000 political season, I joined the Washington firm of Berman and Company, working almost exclusively for its nonprofit client the Center for Consumer Freedom. (CCF hadn’t yet really found its voice, or even its name, back then.) I found myself working alongside people who, like me, lived to dig up elusive nuggets of information and communicate them to a wide audience.
The Center for Consumer Freedom formerly called the “Guest Choice Network (GCN)”) is a front group for the restaurant, alcohol, tobacco and other industries. It runs media campaigns which oppose the efforts of scientists, doctors, health advocates, environmentalists and groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, calling them “the Nanny Culture — the growing fraternity of food cops, health care enforcers, anti-meat activists, and meddling bureaucrats who ‘know what’s best for you.'”
CCF is registered as a tax-exempt, non-profit organization under the IRS code 501(c)(3). Its advisory board is comprised mainly of representatives from the restaurant, meat and alcoholic beverage industries.
Does the name Rick Berman ring a bell? It does if you watch the Rachel Maddow show regularly
Rachel and Dr. Evil last October
HSUS is on to Berman and his astroturf smear campaign
How much our state legislators know about the Center for Consumer Freedom is another question altogether. Berman can make people believe anything, no matter how crazy it sounds. And with unlimited funds from the corporations that benefit from his lies, his tentacles reach deep into our psyches.
Now I’m even more motivated to get as many signatures on the puppy mill petitions as I can. To learn more about this effort, go to puppy mill ballot
Thank you for doing the digging that the mainstream media seems to forget to do when covering puppy mills.
HSUS is a huge political target. When it comes to puppy mills most of the groups fighting them are small and fragmented. There are few large groups actively fighting the roots of puppy mills, not just cleaning up the canine wreckage and human pain they cause. I appreciate any assistance we can get from national organizations.
People in Missouri and elsewhere tend to turn a blind eye to puppy mills, making it even easier for the greedy people like Berman. It is only as we bring the canine and human suffering caused by these caged hells into the light of public awareness will we be able to eradicate puppy mills.
My daughter belongs to a golden retriever rescue group in Tenn. She said the mass production breeders use females until they give birth to more dead puppies than live ones and then kill the mother.
I think we are making progress in changing public attitudes toward animal cruelty. I saw a brief in the paper about a man who beat a dog with a rock so viciously that the dog had to be euthanized. That man was convicted of a crime and sentenced to punishment. That wouldn’t have happened a few decades ago.
Hopefully, we are evolving as a species and recognize that all sentient beings suffer and deserve humane treatment.