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Animal Rights groups merge to ban bowhunting
idsman75
Member Posts: 13,398 ✭✭✭
This is a C&P from another popular site but I think it's important to be informed:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Doug Jeanneret (614) 888-4868 x 212
Beth Ruth (614) 888-4868 x 214
November 19, 2004
Animal Rights Groups to Announce Plan to Merge, Ban Bowhunting
(Columbus) - The U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance (USSA) has learned that the nation's principal anti-hunting organizations will announce a merger on Monday, November 22. In announcing the merger, the unified anti-hunting group will reveal its intention to target bowhunters for extinction.
The USSA, a national organization founded to protect the rights of sportsmen to hunt, fish and trap, has been following a rumor that the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the Fund for Animals are preparing to combine forces.
The HSUS, located in Washington, D.C., is the nation's largest animal rights organization raising nearly $60 million in 2002. The Fund for Animals is the most vociferous anti-hunting organization and is headquartered in New York City. It raised $6.7 million in 2003.
Scripps Howard News Service reporter Lance Gage confirmed the merger announcement to USSA late Friday afternoon. Gage stated that sources within the groups confirmed that the new organization would seek to ban bowhunting as a first priority.
In response, USSA announced an emergency meeting of bowhunting organizations, businesses and publications to prepare to counter the attack. The Alliance created the Bowhunter Defense Coalition to defeat a series of attacks on bowhunters during the late 1980s.
"The merger announcement serves as a wake up call to bowhunting groups to reunite to defeat what promises to be a powerful attack on our heritage from this monstrous anti-hunting group," said Rick Story, U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance senior vice president. "To win, we will need to energize the vast grassroots network of sportsmen across this country."
Over the years, the Fund for Animals and HSUS have been the two most formidable organizations working to ban hunting. While the Fund for Animals has been openly hostile to hunters, HSUS has attempted to mask its intentions by raising funds using puppy calendars for promotions. Earlier this year, HSUS appointed former Fund for Animals official Wayne Pacelle to the position of CEO. Combined with the merger announcement, Pacelle's appointment leaves little doubt about the agenda of the newly-merged organization. According to public filings the new organization will have combined assets of as much as $97 million to implement its anti-hunting agenda.
___________________________________________________________________
Humane Society to merge with Fund for Animals
By LANCE GAY
Scripps Howard News Service
November 19, 2004
WASHINGTON - The Humane Society of the United States is celebrating its 50th anniversary next week by merging with the late Cleveland Amory's Fund for Animals to become the largest and richest animal rights organization in the country.
"This is a historic move that is going to unite the movement," said Wayne Pacelle, the 39-year-old president of the Humane Society, who has spearheaded efforts to unite the competing agendas of organizations fighting for animal rights.
"I'm looking for us to become a hard-hitting campaign organization," Pacelle said.
He said he plans to use the organization's combined budget of $96 million next year to hire five lawyers for a litigation unit. The organization will focus on inhumane treatment of animals in factory farms, animal cruelty and efforts to enforce crackdowns on illegal cockfighting. It also will try to revitalize the campaign against fur clothing, ban inhumane sports hunting with bows and arrows and launch campaigns against keeping exotics as pets.
Humorist and commentator Cleveland Amory, who died in 1998, created the Fund for Animals in 1967 after breaking with the Humane Society, which he thought insufficiently radical and insensitive to the issues of wild animals. Pacelle previously worked for the Fund.
Pacelle said he would like to further unify the animal rights movement in the United States through other mergers, or by creating an umbrella organization that could carry more political clout in Washington.
Rob Sexton, vice president for governmental affairs at the U.S. Sportsman Alliance, an organization created to combat the anti-hunting movement, said the merger indicates the Humane Society will become a more outspoken opponent of hunting.
"The Fund for Animals has always been 100 percent anti-hunting, but the HSUS has been more subtle about it," he said. "This merger signals that HSUS is taking off the mask and devoting a greater amount of its capabilities at hunters. If we do a good job, we are going to unify sportsmen over this."
Some animal welfare groups predicted the Humane Society is staking out a more radical stand on animal welfare issues with the merger, and they doubted Pacelle can achieve his goal of unifying animal protection groups.
"There are some real differences between animal protection groups," said Patti Strand, president of the National Animal Interest Alliance in Portland, Ore., which promotes animal welfare.
Strand said she is opposed to the confrontational approach to animal welfare issues taken by the Humane Society and the Fund for Animals, which she maintains fuels conflicts for fund-raising purposes.
"We oppose them because of their tactics, and their dishonesty in promoting their agenda," Strand said. "Many of the animal protection groups don't like being seen as extremists."
The Humane Society grew out of a split in the animal rights movement in 1954, when Fred Myers, a former reporter for the Kansas City Journal and New York Mirror, led a breakaway faction from the American Humane Association, then a coalition of state and local societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals.
Humane Society historian Bernard Unti said Myers wanted an organization that would be more aggressive in pursuing federal legislation to protect animals, and headquartered the Humane Society of the United States in Washington. Unti said Myers was alarmed that the American Humane Association was not doing enough about the welfare of animals obtained from local pounds that were being used in biomedical research, then unregulated by the government.
Within four years after HSUS was formed on Nov. 22, 1954, the organization claimed its first victory with the help of women's clubs, pushing through Congress the Humane Slaughter Act, which requires humane treatment of animals in slaughterhouses. Myers in 1958 launched an undercover investigation of biomedical laboratories that exposed abuses prompting Congress to pass the Animal Welfare Act in 1966, establishing standards for housing, feeding and proper care of animals used for research.
Unti said the Animal Welfare Act was the most significant of the two new laws because it was extended to include proper treatment of animals in zoos and at roadside animal exhibits.
"We have to recognize it was not an easy road in this society to get these laws passed. There was very significant opposition," he said.
Pacelle said one of his major goals is to close the loopholes in the federal laws that exempted poultry from the Humane Slaughter Act. The Humane Society is campaigning to stop farmers from debeaking chickens so they don't peck at each other in close quarters, and to end battery henhouses.
"I think we're going to see poultry under the Humane Slaughter Act," he said. "It's not healthy for animals to be raised in confined environments."
Pacelle said his organization also is developing programs that will encourage suburban homeowners to live with the wildlife in rural neighborhoods and cut back on hunting. He said the organization does not support a blanket ban on hunting, but is opposed to using bows and arrows, which are inaccurate and can wound animals.
The Humane Society has launched a vigorous campaign to end so-called "canned hunts" where animals are put in enclosed areas for hunters to find them.
http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=HUMANE-11-19-04&cat=AN
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Doug Jeanneret (614) 888-4868 x 212
Beth Ruth (614) 888-4868 x 214
November 19, 2004
Animal Rights Groups to Announce Plan to Merge, Ban Bowhunting
(Columbus) - The U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance (USSA) has learned that the nation's principal anti-hunting organizations will announce a merger on Monday, November 22. In announcing the merger, the unified anti-hunting group will reveal its intention to target bowhunters for extinction.
The USSA, a national organization founded to protect the rights of sportsmen to hunt, fish and trap, has been following a rumor that the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the Fund for Animals are preparing to combine forces.
The HSUS, located in Washington, D.C., is the nation's largest animal rights organization raising nearly $60 million in 2002. The Fund for Animals is the most vociferous anti-hunting organization and is headquartered in New York City. It raised $6.7 million in 2003.
Scripps Howard News Service reporter Lance Gage confirmed the merger announcement to USSA late Friday afternoon. Gage stated that sources within the groups confirmed that the new organization would seek to ban bowhunting as a first priority.
In response, USSA announced an emergency meeting of bowhunting organizations, businesses and publications to prepare to counter the attack. The Alliance created the Bowhunter Defense Coalition to defeat a series of attacks on bowhunters during the late 1980s.
"The merger announcement serves as a wake up call to bowhunting groups to reunite to defeat what promises to be a powerful attack on our heritage from this monstrous anti-hunting group," said Rick Story, U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance senior vice president. "To win, we will need to energize the vast grassroots network of sportsmen across this country."
Over the years, the Fund for Animals and HSUS have been the two most formidable organizations working to ban hunting. While the Fund for Animals has been openly hostile to hunters, HSUS has attempted to mask its intentions by raising funds using puppy calendars for promotions. Earlier this year, HSUS appointed former Fund for Animals official Wayne Pacelle to the position of CEO. Combined with the merger announcement, Pacelle's appointment leaves little doubt about the agenda of the newly-merged organization. According to public filings the new organization will have combined assets of as much as $97 million to implement its anti-hunting agenda.
___________________________________________________________________
Humane Society to merge with Fund for Animals
By LANCE GAY
Scripps Howard News Service
November 19, 2004
WASHINGTON - The Humane Society of the United States is celebrating its 50th anniversary next week by merging with the late Cleveland Amory's Fund for Animals to become the largest and richest animal rights organization in the country.
"This is a historic move that is going to unite the movement," said Wayne Pacelle, the 39-year-old president of the Humane Society, who has spearheaded efforts to unite the competing agendas of organizations fighting for animal rights.
"I'm looking for us to become a hard-hitting campaign organization," Pacelle said.
He said he plans to use the organization's combined budget of $96 million next year to hire five lawyers for a litigation unit. The organization will focus on inhumane treatment of animals in factory farms, animal cruelty and efforts to enforce crackdowns on illegal cockfighting. It also will try to revitalize the campaign against fur clothing, ban inhumane sports hunting with bows and arrows and launch campaigns against keeping exotics as pets.
Humorist and commentator Cleveland Amory, who died in 1998, created the Fund for Animals in 1967 after breaking with the Humane Society, which he thought insufficiently radical and insensitive to the issues of wild animals. Pacelle previously worked for the Fund.
Pacelle said he would like to further unify the animal rights movement in the United States through other mergers, or by creating an umbrella organization that could carry more political clout in Washington.
Rob Sexton, vice president for governmental affairs at the U.S. Sportsman Alliance, an organization created to combat the anti-hunting movement, said the merger indicates the Humane Society will become a more outspoken opponent of hunting.
"The Fund for Animals has always been 100 percent anti-hunting, but the HSUS has been more subtle about it," he said. "This merger signals that HSUS is taking off the mask and devoting a greater amount of its capabilities at hunters. If we do a good job, we are going to unify sportsmen over this."
Some animal welfare groups predicted the Humane Society is staking out a more radical stand on animal welfare issues with the merger, and they doubted Pacelle can achieve his goal of unifying animal protection groups.
"There are some real differences between animal protection groups," said Patti Strand, president of the National Animal Interest Alliance in Portland, Ore., which promotes animal welfare.
Strand said she is opposed to the confrontational approach to animal welfare issues taken by the Humane Society and the Fund for Animals, which she maintains fuels conflicts for fund-raising purposes.
"We oppose them because of their tactics, and their dishonesty in promoting their agenda," Strand said. "Many of the animal protection groups don't like being seen as extremists."
The Humane Society grew out of a split in the animal rights movement in 1954, when Fred Myers, a former reporter for the Kansas City Journal and New York Mirror, led a breakaway faction from the American Humane Association, then a coalition of state and local societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals.
Humane Society historian Bernard Unti said Myers wanted an organization that would be more aggressive in pursuing federal legislation to protect animals, and headquartered the Humane Society of the United States in Washington. Unti said Myers was alarmed that the American Humane Association was not doing enough about the welfare of animals obtained from local pounds that were being used in biomedical research, then unregulated by the government.
Within four years after HSUS was formed on Nov. 22, 1954, the organization claimed its first victory with the help of women's clubs, pushing through Congress the Humane Slaughter Act, which requires humane treatment of animals in slaughterhouses. Myers in 1958 launched an undercover investigation of biomedical laboratories that exposed abuses prompting Congress to pass the Animal Welfare Act in 1966, establishing standards for housing, feeding and proper care of animals used for research.
Unti said the Animal Welfare Act was the most significant of the two new laws because it was extended to include proper treatment of animals in zoos and at roadside animal exhibits.
"We have to recognize it was not an easy road in this society to get these laws passed. There was very significant opposition," he said.
Pacelle said one of his major goals is to close the loopholes in the federal laws that exempted poultry from the Humane Slaughter Act. The Humane Society is campaigning to stop farmers from debeaking chickens so they don't peck at each other in close quarters, and to end battery henhouses.
"I think we're going to see poultry under the Humane Slaughter Act," he said. "It's not healthy for animals to be raised in confined environments."
Pacelle said his organization also is developing programs that will encourage suburban homeowners to live with the wildlife in rural neighborhoods and cut back on hunting. He said the organization does not support a blanket ban on hunting, but is opposed to using bows and arrows, which are inaccurate and can wound animals.
The Humane Society has launched a vigorous campaign to end so-called "canned hunts" where animals are put in enclosed areas for hunters to find them.
http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=HUMANE-11-19-04&cat=AN
Comments
Has anyone ever been to a dog pound that wasn't dirty and had happy looking dogs? I've been to a few pounds and never seen a nice one. Why is that, the kennel we use to board our dogs is clean, I'd damn near eat off their floor it's so clean. Plus all the dogs in there are wagging their tales and appear happy. Point being who is actually being cruel to animals here? Seems to me the people that want over populated starving deer, or neighborhoods where kids get gored by a rutting buck that is chasing a doe, or businesses that are damaged from deer jumping through their windows, and the biggest problem car accidents. If animals were not to be eaten then God would have made it the way it is. It's called a food chain and when it's broken dieses and other problems occur. Damn animal rights people [}:)]
BAG IT. TAG IT. EAT. SLEEP. REPEAT..
Ben
"The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right time, but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment."
[;)]