HumaneWatch

The Humane Society of the United States only gives 1% of its budget to local pet shelters. Where does the rest of the money go? A significant amount is spent on employing dozens of in-house lawyers, which leads to frivolous litigation. The latest HSUS “fail” is a lawsuit intended to harass the pork industry.

Last year, as a part of its campaign of harassment against pork farmers, HSUS sued the USDA over an action by the National Pork Board, the quasi-governmental pork checkoff program that the agency oversees. Checkoff money is mandatory and goes toward research and general promotion of pork consumption.

If you’ve seen commercials promoting pork as “Pork: The Other White Meat,” that’s what the case was about. In 2006, the National Pork Board purchased the slogan from the National Pork Producers Council, which is a private trade organization for pork farmers, and agreed to pay $60 million over 20 years. HSUS concocted a theory that the National Pork Board, by paying for the slogan, was illegally sending checkoff money (which was collected for marketing and research purposes) to the Pork Council, which is allowed to lobby—something the Pork Board is not allowed to spend money on.

But HSUS’s lawsuit didn’t get far. A federal judge dismissed the suit yesterday, finding that HSUS did not have standing to file the complaint because it has no stake in how the checkoff spends its money. (No kidding—after all, HSUS is trying to end the use of animals for food.) The judge ruled that the other two plaintiffs, a pork farmer and a left-wing Iowa group, also did not have standing.

You can read the 34-page opinion here. It’s a thorough dissection.

Here’s a bigger question: How much money did HSUS waste on this suit that could have been spent on helping pets? Where in HSUS’s mission does it state that it cares about pork marketing money?

The entire suit smelled like sour grapes to us. HSUS doesn’t like the Pork Council, so it crafted a lawsuit that wasted time and money in an attempt to mess with it. It strikes us as too many lawyers with too much time on their hands. HSUS supported another lawsuit last year against another checkoff—the beef checkoff—but that went nowhere fast, with the plaintiff, an HSUS “ag council” member, dropping the suit.

Strangely, you don’t see all these lawyers in HSUS commercials. That’s why we made a parody: Lawyers in Cages.

Speaking of lawsuits, there’s one piece of litigation that HSUS must want to go away: The federal RICO lawsuit fingering HSUS and two of its in-house lawyers, including a senior vice president who runs HSUS’s legal department. That lawsuit alleges malicious prosecution and abuse of process, among other claims. That litigation, according to court documents, is moving toward discovery and depositions. We’ll be sure to keep you posted.

News came across our desk on Friday that an HSUS-backed lawsuit has failed. Mike Callicrate, who is on HSUS’s Colorado Ag Council, sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture last year over its administration of the beef checkoff, alleging that checkoff money was being used to lobby (a big no-no). Callicrate dropped his suit last week, presumably because he was going to lose. The Associated Press reports:

His legal move comes a week after the Agriculture Department’s Office of Inspector General released a report finding no evidence that the association board’s activities did not comply with legislation.

The inspector general’s office said it examined more than a thousand invoices amounting to more than $20.5 million in reimbursement payments from the beef checkoff fund.

Callicrate said last year that HSUS, while not a party to the suit, “hired people to go through these [USDA] documents and carefully analyze the information that was in them. This is what gave us the basis for this lawsuit, to be able to file it.” Great—so Callicrate filed something and Wayne Pacelle got to hear himself speak out in Kansas City, and then the plaintiff dropped the suit after a credible party, the Inspector General, investigated and found no evidence of wrongdoing. What a flop.

How many hours of legal research did HSUS provide the basis for this frivolous lawsuit? How many dollars went to salaries or billable hours that could have gone to care for pets—you know, cats and dogs like the ones all over HSUS’s advertising?

This isn’t the first failed lawsuit backed by HSUS, and it won’t be the last. And that’s to say nothing of the lawsuits against HSUS, including one over a raid in South Dakota and another brought under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

You may have seen our parody of HSUS’s national TV ad called “Lawyers in Cages.” A good parody is never too far from reality.

Following this month’s deal between the Humane Society of the United States and the egg industry’s main trade group, it would be easy to get complacent. After all, HSUS agreed to support a federal law mandating “enriched” (larger) hen cages by 2030. HSUS also halted its two state ballot initiatives in the Pacific Northwest that sought to ban cages (enriched or otherwise).

HSUS, however, did not cry uncle on the issue of hen cages. Although the deal seems to imply that enriched cages are okay enough for HSUS, the animal rights group says it will continue to push corporations to switch to cage-free eggs.

This begs the question: Would a cage-free America satisfy the animal rights activists at the Humane Society of the United States? It might surprise you to learn that it wouldn’t. At HSUS’s 2009 annual conference, “Outreach Director” Josh Balk said so:

Anyone who says that cage-free is 100% humane, 100% cruelty-free, just know that’s not accurate. That simply is not accurate.

Since HSUS’s self-purported mission is to confront cruelty, it stands to reason that even if every egg farmer went cage-free, HSUS would still gripe. So what is humane enough for the Humane Society of the United States? Is it even possible to meet this standard?

Let’s first consider that HSUS’s ballot initiatives in the Pacific Northwest would have mandated 216 square inches of space for every hen. The implication of this shift is massive.

Here’s some back-of-the-envelope math: Putting 2.5 million Oregon hens under cage-free systems would require about 65 football fields’ worth of turf for the birds. And the 7 million birds in Washington? 180 football fields.

Right now, the amount of space used for the birds is about one-third to 40 percent of what HSUS seeks under cage-free guidelines. Is such an increase in land use doable? Possibly. But land isn’t cheap, and new infrastructure is costly.

Remember, though, that 216 square inches of space isn’t “100% cruelty-free,” according to HSUS. So let’s consider the next step up: free-range. (HSUS largely focuses on how much room hens have, so it seems logical that “free-range” is next on HSUS’s list.)

We can’t find any free-range standards put forth by the USDA, so we’ll go with European Union standards. For egg-laying hens, the EU requires a minimum of 4 square meters of outdoor space per bird, plus 0.11 square meters of indoor space.

So let’s do the math: If there are 338 million laying hens in the United States—HSUS has a national vision, of course—putting them all in free-range systems would require at least 538 square miles of land, or nearly 350,000 acres. That’s a lot.

And that’s not all. Hens in free-range system also require more feed, due to the fact that they’re burning more energy by walking around outside. They also lay fewer eggs. (The industry calls this lower “feed conversion ratio.”) The amount of additional cropland required would be more than 520,000 acres, according to a Promar International study.

And it could be far more land-consuming. One Australian standard calls for a stocking density of 750 hens per hectare. That’s about one-third of what the EU (2500 hens/ha) standards call for.

Where’s all that land going to come from? We could tear up some forests, but we’re sure HSUS’s lawyers would tie that up in the courts by suing on behalf of the uprooted wildlife.

Inevitably, the costs would overwhelm farmers, and fewer animals would be raised for food. Which is fine by HSUS. And the price of eggs would skyrocket—already, some European consumers pay about $5.50 a dozen. Even $8 a dozen—or more—isn’t out of the question.

But would any of this be better for the birds? We’ve already analyzed how birds in cage-free housing have higher rates or disease and death than those in increasingly popular enriched cages (which are bigger than conventional cages and allow for some natural behaviors).

As for free-range systems, the welfare record appears even worse, on the whole. The birds have more space to forage, but that’s only one measure. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association’s review of the evidence, birds in free-range systems have a higher risk of predation and a lower level of egg production and cleanliness. They also have a higher exposure to disease vectors from wild birds. (Bird flu, anyone?) Researchers have also found that free-range birds aren’t any less stressed in an outdoor environment due to threats of predation, parasites, and extreme temperatures.

HSUS likes to reduce the animal-welfare argument to one part: movement. And that’s certainly an important part. But animal welfare scientists know that the issue is far more complex, on balance.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what system farmers use. Even the most humanely produced organic, free-range egg doesn’t have a place on HSUS’s menu. HSUS won’t settle for “95-percent humane” in its book. In the words of a former HSUS vice president, HSUS wants to “get rid of the industry” and “promot[e] veganism.”

Only when there are no eggs at all will HSUS consider the situation “100% humane.” And at each step along the way to get there, things stand to get worse for farmers, consumers, and the animals.

Following on “Californians for Humane Farms,” “Ohioans for Humane Farms,” Arizonans for Humane Farms,” “Missourians for the Protection of Dogs,” and other cash-cow front groups, a new astroturf organization run by the Humane Society of the United States (note the URL) sprung up yesterday in the state of Washington.

It calls itself—wait for it—“Washingtonians for Humane Farms.” How original.

But if you’re thinking that this is going to be another replay of the 2008 “Proposition 2” in California, think again. This ballot initiative is more far-reaching, and twice as odious.

The language in California’s “Prop 2” was all about how chickens were to be kept. If it ever actually gets implemented, it will require Golden State farmers to provide egg-laying hens with enough room to turn around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs.

When HSUS’s lawyers wrote this language, they probably saw it as self-evident that egg farmers would have to completely get rid of their cages in order to comply. That thinking turned out to be wrong. The language is so vague that one California egg producer is going to court to guarantee approval of its “enriched” cages—the kind the American Humane Association approves of, and of which Temple Grandin says “that’s where producers need to head.”

After Prop. 2 passed, HSUS came back with another California law—this one making it illegal to sell an egg that wasn’t produced according to Prop. 2’s restrictions. This approach has “Unconstitutional” written all over it. (That pesky Commerce Clause…) But unless someone challenges it in federal court, it’s set to become California law in four years.

The measure that HSUS unveiled yesterday wraps all these developments into one big hassle:

1. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a farm owner or operator shall not knowingly confine an egg-laying hen:
   1. in a manner that prevents the hen from turning around freely, lying down, standing up, or fully extending her wings; or
   2. in a cage that is stacked or otherwise placed on top of or below another cage confining one or more egg-laying hens.
2. A person shall not knowingly sell or offer for sale any shell egg for human consumption that is the product of an egg-laying hen confined in a manner contrary to the prohibitions of subsection (1) of this section.

It’s all in there: No cages, no eggs for sale that were produced in cages, no cost-saving efficiency of any kind. And don’t get us started about the increased mortality rates of the chickens, once they’re let loose to live in big flocks. (Remember them? The chickens?)

There’s lots to talk about in this story beyond just how lousy HSUS’s preferred farm system is for the animals that inhabit it.

For starters, why is HSUS hosting a mirror of its “Washingtonians for Humane Farms” website at the Internet domain of what looks to be a real-live political (i.e., electoral) campaign?

Visit KennethLewisForSenate.com and you’ll find yourself back at the anti-agriculture campaign’s website, instead of at the campaign site of the former U.S. Senate candidate from North Carolina. (Here’s a screen-shot, just in case HSUS cleans this up.)

No, we don’t understand what this means either. It’s just kinda creepy.

Also, Wayne Pacelle (or his staff) wrote yesterday that “We have fewer than six months to gather more than 300,000 signatures of Washington voters.” The actual number looks to be around 242,000 signatures. (That’s 8% of the number of people who cast votes for governor the last time Washington elected one.)

Activists will need to collect the signatures from registered voters and turn them in by July 8 in order to get the issue on the ballot in November. HSUS’s Paul Shapiro told the Associated Press last night that HSUS (in the reporter’s words) “will rely on an extensive network of volunteers to gather signatures.”

If you believe that, we have some really tasty vegan rack of lamb for you to taste. Every anti-animal-agriculture ballot campaign HSUS has run in recent years depended on paid signature-gatherers to get the job done. This one will probably be no different.

In any event, the odds are seriously stacked against HSUS in the state of Washington, where very few initiatives that are filed ever become “certified” for the ballot. Last year, 77 measures were proposed, of which nine made it to the ballot (and only four passed). In 2009, 23 measures were filed and just one was certified. (The voters rejected it). In 2008, 57 measures were filed and voters saw just three on Election Day. (They approved two and rejected one. )

HSUS’s ballot initiative text hasn’t hit the Washington Secretary of State’s website yet, but there are already 15 different initiatives proposed. It’s going to be another crowded field, and Washington residents are going to get “signature fatigue” pretty quickly.

All of which bodes well for chickens, and for consumer choice.

We’re of the opinion that the politics of food tend to be intensely personal, and that people should have lots of choices. Reasonable people will, of course, have reasonable disagreements about chicken welfare, so consumers should be able to choose what they want to buy when they shop. There’s a place for ordinary eggs, for cage-free, for free-range, and whatever else comes down the pike. Buy whatever your values (and your income) suggest, even if that leads you to opt for no eggs at all.

HSUS’s approach is to force the options it doesn't like out of the marketplace, leaving everyone with fewer choices and more expensive food. We disagree with that plan, and we hope most Washingtonians do too.

Disclaimer: No one at HumaneWatch is a constitutional lawyer. We don’t even play them on TV. So if any genuine legal eagles out there have a smarter or more cogent analysis of this, we’re all ears.

Maybe California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has forgotten about all those thermoses full of raw eggs he used to gulp down in his bodybuilding days. Or perhaps he’s still mad at the anonymous protester who hurled a raw egg at him during a 2003 campaign stop. (Schwarzenegger shook it off and said “this guy owes me bacon now.”)

But for whatever reason, the Governator signed a bill into law earlier this month (“AB 1437”) which could “Terminate” the concept of cheap, plentiful eggs in his state. The new law, heavily promoted and lobbied by the Humane Society of the United States, will extend the reach of Proposition 2—the 2008 ballot initiative requiring egg farmers to give their chickens far more precious real estate. AB 1437 requires eggs imported into California to follow the Proposition 2 standards imposed on in-state farmers.

Both Proposition 2 and this new companion law will take effect in January 2015. So we can expect four more years legal wrangling over just how much wing-flapping room the law requires for each bird.

Oh, goodie.

One California farm has already invested millions of dollars in larger cages that seem to satisfy the letter of the law, but no one seems to know for sure. A company vice president is complaining about the vagueness of the new benchmarks, saying “we are still in need of clear standards … How do you know what is Prop 2 compliant unless you define it?”

HSUS hasn’t exactly been helpful in clarifying what kinds of chicken cages—if any—might comply with Proposition 2. And predictably, the group is leapfrogging ahead to the conclusions that no such chicken coop exists, and that all cages must go. HSUS CEO Wayne Pacelle wrote recently that Schwarzenegger’s signature means “California will become a cage-free state.”

Will it really?

Since the very first hearing on AB 1437, Sacramento legislators have expressed concern that the bill could violate the U.S. Constitution’s “Interstate Commerce Clause” (at least as the clause has been interpreted by the Supreme Court). The conventional reading holds that only the U.S. Congress may “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States …” (emphasis added).

AB 1437’s central idea is that Californians can tell Missourians and Ohioans, for instance, how to produce eggs that are sold in the Golden State. And that doesn’t seem to be Constitutional.

In written advice to a California Assembly committee back in June 2009, one legislative analyst warned:

Since California does import eggs from out of state, this will impact out-of-state producers.  The committee may want to consider if this could be in conflict with the interstate commerce clause.

But don’t think HSUS put all its lobbying muscle behind a California law that has zero chance of passing Constitutional muster. They may be radicals, but they’re not stupid. It turns out that the Commerce Clause has a loophole big enough to drive an egg truck through.

Here’s how the U.S. History Encyclopedia describes HSUS’s best hope to keep AB 1437 alive (emphasis added):

State health, sanitary, and quarantine laws that interfere with foreign and interstate commerce … are also valid as long as they do not conflict with federal regulations on the subject.

Translation: A state’s local interest in safeguarding public health can override the federal government’s exclusive power to control commerce between one state and another.

For you Con Law students out there, the controlling federal case is from 1960, Huron Portland Cement Co. v. City of Detroit. Detroit was sued for enforcing an anti-pollution ordinance against ships owned by a cement company. The company argued that since the federal government had already licensed it to haul goods from state to state, no local government could control how much its ships were polluting the air.

The Court sided with the city (emphasis added):

The ordinance was enacted for the manifest purpose of promoting the health and welfare of the city's inhabitants … [T]he Constitution when conferring upon Congress the regulation of commerce … never intended to cut the States off from legislating on all subjects relating to the health, life, and safety of their citizens, though the legislation might indirectly affect the commerce of the country.

Here’s how this will likely play out: By itself, California’s AB 1437 might be unconstitutional. But if it was enacted in order to protect the health of Californians—that is, if giving egg-laying hens more room makes the eggs safer to eat—then AB 1437 could actually trump the U.S. Constitution.

Whoever drafted the bill (and there’s no reason to believe it wasn’t HSUS’s lawyers) clearly anticipated this. Here’s how the law’s text begins (emphasis added):

The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(a) According to the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Production, food animals that are treated well and provided with at least minimum accommodation of their natural behaviors and physical needs are healthier and safer for human consumption.

(b) A key finding from the World Health Organization and Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations Salmonella Risk Assessment was that reducing flock prevalence results in a directly proportional reduction in human health risk.

(c) Egg-laying hens subjected to stress are more likely to have higher levels of pathogens in their intestines and the conditions increase the likelihood that consumers will be exposed to higher levels of food-borne pathogens.

(d) Salmonella is the most commonly diagnosed food-borne illness in the United States.

(e) It is the intent of the Legislature to protect California consumers from the deleterious, health, safety, and welfare effects of the sale and consumption of eggs derived from egg-laying hens that are exposed to significant stress and may result in increased exposure to disease pathogens including salmonella.

See? The lawyers seem to have looked three moves ahead, just like a good chess player. AB 1437 intends to protect Californians’ health. But two questions remain.

First, does it actually do that? Does science really show that cage-free eggs are safer to eat?

And second, does it matter? In other words, if an egg is an egg is an egg, is the legislature’s stated intention enough to cancel out good science?

The second question is for the Constitutional lawyers out there to bicker over. But the first one isn’t exactly a slam dunk for the more expensive eggs that AB 1437 (and HSUS) prefers.

Ironically, on the same day Schwarzenegger signed the bill into law, TIME magazine published a report about some new USDA research. The latest science gives the health-and-safety edge to eggs from hens kept in the very kind of cages that Proposition 2 outlawed:

[I]t's worth it to pay more because you're getting a healthier product, right? Wrong. Most of the time, according to a just-released study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the eggs are indistinguishable. When there is a difference, it's often the factory eggs that are safer …

[And] with the environmental contaminants … the factory eggs have the edge. Research in both the U.S. and the E.U. has shown that free-range chickens have higher levels of PCBs, simply because they get out more and can peck almost anywhere. "There was a study in California of a free-range or organic farm with a wood-processing facility nearby," says [USDA immunologist and microbiologist Peter] Holt. “The chickens there had 100 times the PCB level of battery-cage chickens.”

Oops. The Orange County Register may have summed it up best, editorializing that same morning: “[I]t obviously makes a lot of us feel better to treat chickens more humanely. Just don't think our moral compass will automatically point the way toward a healthier diet.”

But what about salmonella? In the language of AB 1437, that’s what appears to matter most. In December 2009, HSUS published an online article citing five recent studies [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] in which salmonella levels among caged hens were higher than in cage-free birds. But here’s what HSUS isn’t telling you.

1. USDA scientists have found that only about 1 in every 20,000 eggs might be contaminated with salmonella. (At current consumption rates, the average American might encounter one of those eggs every 84 years.)
    
2. Even if an egg is contaminated with salmonella, the only way it can translate into a human illness is if the egg isn’t refrigerated or cooked properly.
    
3. Salmonella-egg studies usually measure the total level of pathogens in the chicken manure collected from an egg facility. A big reason lower levels are found in “cage-free” farms is that they tend to have fewer hens. In other words, a pile of manure from 100,000 birds could pose a greater health risk than a pile of manure from a flock of 5,000 cage-free birds. But that doesn’t mean an individual egg from either farm is safer.

We were curious about the real-world implications of all this, so we called United Egg Producers and asked how many human illnesses the Food and Drug Administration had traced back to salmonella in eggs during the past three or four years. Their response? “We don’t know of any, and we would know.”

Keep one last thing in mind. Prop 2 and AB 1437 only apply to “whole” eggs, still in the shell. “Processed” eggs produced in (or shipped into) California in liquid or powder form aren’t covered at all. There’s a good reason for this: The USDA has required the pasteurization of all “processed” eggs since the Egg Products Inspection Act was passed, way back in 1970. And pasteurizing food, if you recall your high-school science, pretty much neutralizes salmonella and other pathogens.

Here’s the bottom line: California’s new law clearly won’t make Californians any healthier. But the state legislature’s (misguided and misinformed) good intentions may be enough to consign lots of good science to the “irrelevant” pile. And what was that our grandmothers always said about good intentions?

Everyone makes mistakes. Our initial analysis of yesterday’s HSUS “Buckeye Compromise” was a hasty first impression, written immediately after the late-day press conference. (Who holds a press conference at 4:30pm anyway?) Since then we’ve heard from a number of people in a variety of walks of life, essentially all saying “yes, but…” on one point or other.

So now that more details of the deal have emerged, it seems like a good idea to revisit the issue with a bit of hindsight—or at least to analyze what happened a little more thoughtfully. In short, we think the self-congratulatory language (from everyone) in the press conference effectively camouflaged the substance of what we’re seeing today on paper. Sticking our customary skepticism in a drawer was our mistake, and our's alone.

Here’s what has emerged in the last 18 hours, and a bit of what the proverbial “devil in the details” could end up meaning:

The most glaring omission from yesterday’s press conference—and in hindsight we really should have seen it coming—was the language in Paragraph 10 of the agreement. Here it is (emphasis added):

The HSUS will not submit a constitutional amendment on animal welfare in 2010 to the Ohio Secretary of State. Failure to implement the provisions related to wild and dangerous animals or the reforms recommended to the OLCSB by December 31, 2010 could void the agreement and allow the HSUS to pursue a ballot initiative whenever it chooses. However, if the terms of this agreement are met and implemented to the satisfaction of all parties, the agreement will extend to January 1, 2014. At that time the agreement shall be extended through January 1, 2017, and subsequently through January 1, 2020, if the terms continue to be met, and no party shall reasonably withhold its consent to the extensions.

We were wrong when we said yesterday that HSUS has agreed to cave on the egg issue, walk away, and not come back. In reality, HSUS is going to have the Ohio Farm Bureau on a leash, tugging it along every three years until right about the time Wayne Pacelle is ready to start cashing in his loaded pension. And if Wayne Pacelle doesn’t feel an appropriate amount of love (or groveling) by December 31, 2010, HSUS will be right back next year to start the political process all over again.

Worse still, it actually looks like the 500,000+ signatures that HSUS collected bought this spring might not have any sort of expiration date on them. They could still be valid next year, or the year after that, or the year after that. HSUS has already invested its money to gather the signatures; it can just keep threatening to submit them every year as a new kind of “leverage.”

At least that’s what we believe to be true, since we can’t find anything in the Ohio elections law that would prohibit it. (You legal eagles, feel free to correct us.)

The second thing that grabbed my attention when we saw the actual agreement today (and you should read all of it, people) was Paragraph 6. Here’s what it says, in part (again, emphasis added):

Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) will issue a statement in support of the mission and purpose of the OLCSB and will engage and work with the Board. Organizations representing Ohioans for Livestock Care and the HSUS will examine and jointly fund independent research projects and studies to identify best practices and to work for the highest farm animal care and welfare standards. If assistance of a third party is needed they will jointly agree on a representative to help in these discussions. When this work is complete, the findings will be presented to the OLCSB.

This is just plain ridiculous. The entire genesis of HSUS’s political campaign in Ohio was its objection to last year’s “Issue 2,” which established the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board. Ohioans voted overwhelmingly to freeze HSUS out of the process, opting instead to trust things to farmers and veterinarians—the people who actually have experience with, well … livestock care. Experts were in. HSUS was out.

But now it looks like HSUS has negotiated its way back inside. It will “work with” the Board and “jointly fund” research to steer its decisions. Good grief!

Having said all of that, we understand Ohio’s dog breeders must feel like the Farm Bureau threw them under the bus. Fair enough. Yesterday’s information about what would constitute “puppy mill reform” was vague. Today it’s not.

The agreement calls for everyone to urge Ohio lawmakers “to support and pass SB 95 largely in the current form.” Here’s SB 95. And here’s one organization’s analysis of what it would do. Read it for yourself. One word comes to mind: “Eek.” This is not good.

Also, we poked a little fun yesterday at the concept of wrapping exotic animals into this, thinking that it isn’t exactly common to see people living in Ohio keeping lions, tigers, and bears as backyard pets. But here’s the actual language that was negotiated (emphasis added, one last time):

The Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources will coordinate and take action on wild and dangerous animals including the prohibition of the sale and/or possession of big cats, bears, primates, large constricting and venomous snakes and alligators and crocodiles. Existing owners will be grandfathered in, but they could not breed or obtain new animals.

Now we see it. Traveling circuses keep and display lots of these “exotics.” This seems aimed at the Ringling Brothers guys (who are suing HSUS under the federal RICO law, remember?), and we're willing to bet the regulations HSUS will “suggest” are going to be crafted to prohibit The Greatest Show On Earth from entering the state if it is in "posession" of a lion or bear cub born after the regs take effect. Again, not cool.

Overall, we still think everyone came to the table as a hedge against political uncertainty—especially Governor Strickland, who’s in for the fight of his political life this November. But now that the dust has settled, we think HSUS came better prepared to wring every last drop of blood it could out of the process. And so while Ohio’s farmers got some much-needed breathing room, it’s all temporary.

It’s important to remember (and this is what we forgot yesterday) that HSUS is playing a much “longer” game than Ohio’s pork, egg, and veal producers. Wayne Pacelle has what amounts to a 40-year strategic plan to get rid of all of them. The farmers, meanwhile, are focused on making ends meet from one growing season to the next. For now, at least, HSUS is exiting Ohio without leaving animal agriculture in ruins behind it. (And this time, I'm talkin' to you, California…)

Ultimately, Pacelle has the funds to outlast the Ohio Farm Bureau, and most of that money, of course, is scammed from Americans who think they’re contributing to a real humane society. (But you already knew that.)

So we shouldn’t have been so hasty to jump for joy. And we still don’t know how a November election would have turned out. But we're far less impressed with the result now, and continually amazed at how HSUS continues to get so much of what it wants from people who should think long and hard before doing their best Neville Chamberlain impersonations.

Last week the Humane Society of the United States filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against an Iowa egg company. No surprise there—HSUS has a habit of annoying anyone who dares to keep chickens cooped up like … well, like chickens. Exhibit A: The group is having a collective California hissy fit over an egg farm there that just invested $3.2 million to make its chicken cages bigger. (HSUS says they’re still not big enough).

Now, anyone can file an FTC complaint like this one against any company, for just about any reason. (It helps to have more than 30 lawyers on your payroll, of course.) And the family-owned company HSUS is targeting, Rose Acre Farms, also happens to be certified by the American Humane Association (not to be confused with HSUS) as part of its “American Humane Certified” program.

So this is an unlikely target. And it’s also incredibly unlikely that the FTC will do anything more with HSUS’s complaint than use it to prop up an uneven table leg. The animal rights group filed a similar FTC complaint in 2008 against the United Egg Producers. And another one in 2007 against fashion designers and clothing retailers whose fur labels weren’t everything HSUS wanted them to be.

The collective response from the government? Cue the sound of crickets.

The same non-response came from the FTC when HSUS's ideological twin, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, filed an FTC complaint against egg producers (for, of all things, sponsoring Sesame Street). So it turns out that this, like shareholder activism against public companies, is just another PETA tactic that HSUS has appropriated.

It shouldn’t escape anyone’s notice that the egg farm in HSUS’s crosshairs with its new FTC complaint is one of the same two companies HSUS targeted back in April. Remember that jumbled mashup of an undercover chicken-farm horror video?

Yeah—we’d forgotten about it too. And so has the national media. HSUS lost whatever weak traction they built up in April; the two-day news cycle turned against them and then petered out completely, so they’re back for another attempt at cheap publicity.

Our favorite line from HSUS’s FTC complaint is this one, form the bottom of page two:

Rose Acre is deceiving consumers concerned about the suffering of animals with false assurances of care. FTC intervention is particularly important here because there are virtually no market restraints on this type of deception. Consumers are unable to determine upon receiving the product that they have been deceived about the level of animal care provided …

Holy Pacelle, Batman! Strike “Rose Acre” and insert “HSUS.” Now read it again. Isn't the Humane Society of the United States doing essentially the same thing by posing as a dog- and cat-sheltering "humane society"?

It would be fascinating to see the Federal Trade Commission go after HSUS for deceptive advertising practices After all, donors to HSUS—those who buy its “product”—are "unable to determine" that they’ve bought a pig in a poke (instead of an umbrella group for pet shelters).

Before anyone gets delusions of common sense in Washington, though, you can forget about it. Here’s how one former Consumer Protection Bureau director at the FTC spells out what the Commission can and can’t do:

Section 4 of the FTC Act gives the Commission jurisdiction over corporations that are operated for their own profit or that of their members. Although the Commission has successfully asserted jurisdiction over various non-profit entities, purely charitable organizations have been considered outside the Commission's jurisdiction under the FTC Act.

Absent some other grounds for jurisdiction, we are unlikely to open an investigation into charities that have been granted tax-exempt status by the IRS under Section 501 (c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

The American Bar Association’s FTC Practice and Procedure Manual adds that the FTC can only take actions “against ‘persons, partnerships, or corporations.’ It defines a ‘corporation’ as an entity ‘organized to carry on business for its own profit or that of its members’.”

In other words, a nonprofit trade association can be hassled by the FTC, but not a nonprofit animal rights group.

We’ll leave the discussion of whether this is fair or not to you legal eagles out there. After all, HSUS is in “business” just as much as any farmer. Its main product is conflict. And business is apparently booming.