HSUS: Token Help for Pet Shelters?

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is not affiliated with local humane societies, but it raises money like it is one by showing misleading ads full of dogs and cats. In reality, a minor fraction of HSUS’s efforts involve pets, and HSUS only gives 1 percent of the money is raises to hands-on pet shelters.

HSUS retorts that it provides services to shelters besides grant money. Sure—at a cost. But what does HSUS do for free?

We have noticed that HSUS is involved with the Shelter Pet Project, a series of PSAs encouraging adopting from shelters—a good thing. The project is a collaborative effort between HSUS, the Ad Council, Maddie’s Fund, and a firm called Draftfcb.

But how much of the effort is the genesis of HSUS taking initiative for local humane societies? Not very much, it would seem. Here’s how the head of Maddie’s Fund described the origin of the campaign:

It started in Chicago in 2007 with Howard Draft, a founder of Draftfcb, one of the world’s largest communications agency networks. A longtime animal lover, Draft was a great supporter of PAWS Chicago, the city’s largest No Kill humane organization, and wondered how he could help the No Kill movement could go national. He was on the board of directors of the Ad Council, and it was his idea to get them involved.  It was a little unusual; they had never taken on a project that wasn’t human focused before, but the rest of the board approved it.

PAWS Chicago didn’t have a national outreach, so they thought of Maddie’s Fund, a family foundation established in 1999 to help fund the creation of a No Kill nation. The Ad Council also wanted to have an organization that worked with a greater number of shelters, and selected HSUS as a partner because they have a huge network. With our funding and their network and the Ad Council’s expertise and Draftfcb’s creative talent, it was clear we would have a great partnership.

Just to keep this straight: This wasn’t HSUS’s idea at all, and HSUS was the last one to the party. You might not guess that from the press releases that HSUS puts out.

So what exactly has HSUS done? The ads were made by Draftfcb. The Ad Council specializes in getting donated airtime for PSAs. Maddie’s Fund refers to donating “our funding”--$1.8 million over 4 years, to be precise. (The Ad Council charges about $2.5-3 million for a three-year national campaign. Assuming that's the case here, is HSUS paying the remainder? We can't tell. But it still wouldn't equal what Maddie's Fund is chipping in.)

Maddie’s Fund says HSUS donated “their network,” apparently referring to HSUS’s knowledge of pet shelters. You’d think Petfinder could have helped out in a similar way. (In fact, Petfinder is the basis for the Shelter Pet Project’s website search engine.) Petfinder is certainly less controversial—there are plenty of good folks in the sheltering and rescue community who don’t have the highest opinion of HSUS.

Meanwhile, HSUS is saying things like “We launched the Shelter Pet Project with Maddie’s Fund and the Ad Council.” Isn’t it the other way around? They launched it, and HSUS was a bit of a “me too”?

We’ll just leave you with this quote from the late Cleveland Amory, a former HSUS board member a while back who left to found the anti-hunting Fund for Animals, where a young Wayne Pacelle cut his teeth before moving to HSUS:

“I’m not an admirer of HSUS. They’ve always been primarily a direct-mail operation, and what’s known in animal rights circles as a credit-grabber.”

HSUS Goes Out of (the Dog Food) Business?

Remember “Humane Choice” dog food, a brand that HSUS launched in early 2010? The vegetarian kibble made in Uruguay and imported thousands of miles into the US that HSUS laughably dubbed “ethically responsible”? With the odd headshot of CEO Wayne Pacelle on the bag?

Yeah, that stuff. It looks like the so-called “Humane Choice” has been voted off the island. We can’t find it for sale anywhere.

The “Humane Choice” website, www.thehumanechoice.com, is no longer active. What about Petfood Direct? “This item is no longer available,” says the company. What about Petco? Nope. Same with Whole Foods. Even Google Shopping turned up zero results.

That’s probably for the better. We were skeptical of it, as were a host of others including HSUS fans on Facebook. Even a former HSUS vice president panned the idea of vegetarian diets for dogs, saying that dogs do best with a diet that includes (gasp!) animal protein. As a veterinarian with NYC Veterinary Specialists put it: “Dogs and cats, they’re carnivores and they do eat meat as part of their natural diet.” Another veterinarian stated, “Dogs need meat in their diet.”

HSUS promotes vegan diets for people, so we assumed that this was an attempt to extend its human ideology to pets. But as pet expert Tracie Hotchner told CNN, we should “respect each species for what it was meant to be.”

Hey, at least HSUS hasn’t ventured into the vegan cat food business.

HSUS’s “Direct Care” for Animals is Plummeting

Despite HSUS’s recent claim that it “provides direct care to more animals than any organization in the nation,” we’ve shown that local groups like the Houston SPCA care for just as many or more animals on a significantly slimmer budget. Now we’ve noticed something new: As of December 29, HSUS reported that it had cared for “more than 60,000” animals in 2011. That’s way down from 2010, when HSUS says it cared about 100,000.

In other words, the amount of “direct care” to animals provided by the Humane Society of the United States dropped by about 40 percent—in a single year.

That’s really too bad. As critical as we are of HSUS (we are a watchdog group, after all), we’ve given it a thumbs up for its direct-care programs. Hopefully this trend reverses in 2012.

According to HSUS’s 2010 annual report, the breakdown of its direct care that year is roughly: 11,000 animals helped via the Animal Rescue Team; 68,000 through spay/neuter surgeries during “Spay Day”; 6,400 from animal fighting investigations; and 16,000 in HSUS’s wildlife care centers and horse sanctuaries.

How does 2011 match up? (HSUS’s 2011 annual report isn’t published yet, so we’re going by available data.)

• Animal Rescue Team: 8,000 (a drop of 27 percent)
• Spay Day: 48,000 (a decline of 29 percent)
• Investigations and care centers (the remainder): About 5,000 (a decline of 77 percent)

It’s also interesting to note that “Spay Day”—which is a big PR event for HSUS—accounted for 80 percent of the animals HSUS provided “hands-on care” for.

Why is this significant? Because “Spay Day” isn’t long-term care. It’s a one-off event, and it seems that HSUS isn’t as effective as the Doris Day Animal League was in running Spay Day (HSUS took over the event in 2006 after the groups merged).

Remember, HSUS doesn’t run a single pet shelter, and the animals it does provide long-term care for generally are not dogs and cats. Yet, more than 85 percent of the animals in HSUS’s TV appeals are cats and dogs. According to public polling, most Americans mistakenly believe HSUS is a pet-shelter umbrella group and that HSUS gives most of its money to pet shelters.

HSUS’s ads clearly fuel this misconception for HSUS’s gain. And in the meantime, HSUS’s actual direct care—for cats, dogs, and all animals—is falling rapidly. We’ll have more analysis as more information becomes available, but it’s worth wondering: Could the decline in direct care indicate that HSUS’s budget dropped significantly in 2011?

As long as hands-on care isn’t a top priority at HSUS—it still doesn’t run a single pet shelter—the rule remains: If you want to help with the care of pets, give to a local group

PETA and HSUS: Who’s Horsing Around?

There’s been a lot of press devoted recently to the possible (probable?) reinstatement of horse slaughter in the United States. As expected, HSUS made hay out of horse slaughter’s potential return—while, oddly, HSUS’s little sister in the animal rights movement, PETA, had a different take. Speaking to the Christian Science Monitor, PETA co-founder Ingrid Newkirk said:

It's quite an unpopular position we've taken. There was a rush to pass a bill that said you can't slaughter them anymore in the United States. But the reason we didn't support it, which sets us almost alone, is the amount of suffering that it created exceeded the amount of suffering it was designed to stop.

We hate to say it, but PETA is the voice of sanity here. (Is it out of place to mention that it’s not like PETA has a problem with animals being killed?) After the ban on domestic slaughter, horses were simply shipped to Canada and Mexico to be slaughtered—a long distance to travel outside of the purview of USDA inspectors and US humane slaughter laws. Last year, the number of horses going to slaughter abroad totaled 138,000. In other words, it’s arguable that HSUS helped cause a decrease in animal welfare.

Meanwhile, horse abandonment has increased domestically. Recent research presented in the Journal of Animal Science found that 100,000 unwanted horses turn up every year, but the capacity of horse rescues is only 13,400 animals.

HSUS president Wayne Pacelle retorts that abandonment has increased because of economic circumstances. He has a point, but he doesn’t answer this one question: If slaughter is totally banned, where are all those horses to go?

Horse sanctuaries across the country are already filled to capacity. So, predictably, some animals have been left to die of starvation. Their owners can’t sell them and can’t afford the cost for a veterinarian to euthanize the animal.

Meanwhile, Pacelle’s response is normative: People shouldn’t own horses unless they can care for them. OK, sure. But who can predict an economic downturn? Welcome to reality, where things don’t always go as planned. (And it’s not like everybody has a six-figure salary and pension plan like Wayne Pacelle.)

To HSUS’s credit, it does operate a horse sanctuary out in Oregon called the Duchess Sanctuary, which holds 200 horses on 1,120 acres. But since we haven’t seen any ideas from HSUS as to what to do with 138,000 horses if all horse slaughter was banned, let us suggest that HSUS build a Duchess Sanctuary for all of them.

By our calculation, HSUS would need to build ranches exceeding 1,200 square miles in size to house all of these animals.

That would require a lot of hard work and a lot of money. Doable? Possibly. But HSUS would have to “pony up” in a major way.

Of course, it’d be far easier for HSUS to continue making hay out of the horse slaughter issue and raising money off of it. If HSUS is going to continue to oppose horse slaughter, hopefully it offers some practical solutions—for the horses.

What Does the Pet Sheltering Community Really Think About HSUS?

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is feeling the heat. More and more people are learning, thanks to this project and other efforts, that HSUS is not a real “humane society” and in fact gives only 1 percent of the money it raises to pet shelters. People are seeing how HSUS uses misleading advertising that preys on the common misconception that HSUS is a pet-shelter umbrella in order to raise millions from the public.

In response, HSUS is trying to act like it’s the pet sheltering community’s biggest advocate. But we’re skeptical. We’ve noticed numerous comments made to the media from shelters that have been willing to publicly speak out against HSUS. And we’ve suspected these represent a broader portion of the community.

Our own November poll of the sheltering community, which used a nationally representative sample of 400 rescues, shelters, and animal control organizations, found that 71 percent agree that “HSUS misleads people into thinking it is associated with local animal shelters.”

We’ve decided to print some of the comments we received during our poll. Some have been edited for grammar and spelling. For obvious reasons, we’re not going to identify them.

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“A horrible organization that does a disservice to those of us who are helping dogs and cats.” –A rescue

“I don't believe that HSUS or ASPCA either one should use money that was donated to their organization to create their heartbreaking commercials that play on the hearts of people!  Both commercials make you believe that they are working in "local" areas as well but I for one have NEVER seen them in the [redacted] area, nor have they ever done anything to help my rescue animals!  I also don't believe that they should be paying their executives a six-digit salary out of donated money!  That is SO wrong!” –A rescue

“I am appalled that they share so little of the funds raised with organizations that are actually out there in the trenches fighting the war against pet overpopulation and abuse.”—A shelter

“I feel they deliberately misrepresent what they are and what they do.”—A rescue

“The commercials you see on TV ads imply that the HSUS and the ASPCA give the money they raise to local shelters because of the footage and pictures they use. It is my understanding that the money they raise is to attack other groups (i.e. hunting, agricultural) and to lobby at the government level. … It makes me pretty angry when I then read articles that the President of HSUS is spending money trying to convince people that eating meat is wrong and going after hunting organizations. He is only looking at what he thinks is important and has lost sight of the real issues.”—A shelter

“One look at HSUS IRS filings will show that they have well over $200,000,000.00 (Two Hundred MILLION dollars) in investments & cash that can easily be converted to cash (i.e. stock market investments). I'd like to know what a "humane society" that doesn't own ONE SINGLE shelter, needs that money for?  …The HSUS is perpetuating a SCAM on the public.” – A rescue

“I've sat on local and statewide task forces for animal welfare and am never surprised the lengths the HSUS/ASPCA will go to get their way.  I frequently post informational HSUS articles to my FB account so people understand where the funds go.  ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS FOLLOW THE MONEY!!!!” –A rescue

“They use animal tragedies like hurricane Katrina and the Vick case to raise funds and yet do not voluntarily use those funds raised to "help" the animals.  They only use the tragedy to further their agenda. They are despicable.” –A rescue

“They mislead the public and money is misappropriated just like with government taxes, etc.  […]  The Humane Society gets all the publicity, funds and praise.  How much physical labor is involved for their administrators each day?” – A rescue

“A whole lot of talk, very little action.”—A shelter

“I would like to see a good portion of the money spent on the political front spent helping these shelters.  We are lucky where we are and I have good support from my city officials.  I know there are some shelter who could really use the help.  I know there are evaluation tools available but I also believe there is a cost to them and know that many can't afford it.”—A shelter

“It frustrates me that they do not make it clear to the general public that they (HSUS) do not directly maintain any shelters for homeless animals and they do not make it clear that they are a distinctly separate entity from the local Humane Society.  HSUS, I believe, misleads the general public into believing that they support the local humane societies and small rescue organizations when this is not the case at all.”—A rescue

“I think of HSUS like PETA, they take money from the public in the guise that they help animals, but they are more POLITICAL organizations than anything else.”—A rescue

“I have no positive thoughts towards the HSUS at all. I think they are money-hungry and attention-seeking, riding into a situation when the media is there then dumping the problem on someone else's shoulders.”—A rescue

“Like any national nonprofit, they have overhead for administrative costs that get paid first....I often wonder just how much they really do for the animals because I have been in ditches and never saw one of them beside me getting animals to safety.  Or do they only do things on a national level that will bring in the donations to pay the help?”—A rescue

“Don't care for them at all, they do a disservice to all shelters and rescues.”—A rescue

“Misleading advertising, hidden agenda, funds could be better used elsewhere.”—A rescue

“They need to spend more money helping animals and local rescues more directly and consistently.”—A rescue

“When the HSUS supported Michael Vick, my suspicions were confirmed.  They are all about the money vs. truly helping animal welfare causes.  I think they should be supporting rural and poor shelters vs. all shelters.” – A rescue

“I think they misrepresent themselves to look like they're "your local neighborhood shelter or rescue organization" in their literature and all of the mailings they do.”—A rescue

“Useless, harmful, and misleading.”—A rescue

“I do think these national groups should disclose on all fundraising or donation solicitation material what percentage goes into a much smaller, local organizations so that people can learn to differentiate. More than the money, I think a lot of small groups would greatly appreciate hands-on advice & resources from these groups when called upon. That seems to be the biggest complaint...”—A shelter

“We really don't know how they are helping any animals directly!”—A shelter

“I am extremely unhappy with HSUS's lobbying against stronger animal protection laws (e.g., Hayden Act, Oreo's Law), [...] their support of Michael Vick, and their disingenuous fundraising annually and after large-scale disasters like Katrina. HSUS dumped countless animals on small, underfunded rescues in the aftermath of disasters yet took credit in the media for rescuing animals. Some of these animals were left at kill shelters where they likely lost their lives after "rescue" by HSUS.”—A rescue

“A scam.”—A rescue

“They are not an organization aimed at providing care for animals in shelters, and should stop advertising themselves as such.”—A rescue

“For the amount of money they bring in they do not do enough good.”—A rescue

“It misrepresents what it does. They have turned into a front for PETA.” —A rescue

“Only does those things that will grab media attention.  Misleads public.”—A rescue

“It, like a lot of organizations, looks only towards causes that get them publicity. They spend way too much money on glossy magazines and staff salaries and way too little on local shelters that are not "publicity magnets" but need day to day financial assistance from an organization that has it to give. I myself will not continue as a HSUS member.”—A shelter

“That they need to scale back their big fat salaries and put more of their money into educational campaigns and facilities to support low cost spay/neuter.  They aren't doing enough to end the needless, horrendous euthanasia statistics from animal shelters across the country.”—A rescue

“Their nightly solicitation by way of commercials is but one way they mislead the public into believing that money raised actually is helping ‘save the animals.’ If they are so proud to be collecting from the public by the money they spend on these commercials, then it should be noted on the bottom of the TV screen just how little even goes to the animals, or any other community outreach program. I think they are a disgrace to the rescues that actually do work for next to nothing to help get animals adopted.”—A rescue

“A mouthpiece with no true interest in helping those really dealing with the issue. A politically driven organization.”—A rescue

“I think the HSUS has a slick marketing campaign and huge PR budget ... with little benefit to the local shelters and rescues.”—A rescue

“They prey on people who are truly concerned with animal welfare who are willing to donate money to help, when they are only helping their own pocket books and let needy animals sit in over crowed, underfunded shelters until they are euthanized.  All the time, the public thinks they are helping their community and can't understand why so many animals are still being put down or why rescues need so much financial help.”—A rescue

“A lot of misrepresentation of what they do and how they "help" animals. The money spent on "administrative costs" while denying the animals is pathetically unbalanced. They use their name to address issues, but I wonder how many who may have come from the smaller world of shelters, remember what it was like to work in them.”—A rescue

“They make a good statement, but when it comes to actually doing, they don't! They do money type things such as the commercials but … we do the day in and day out work that no one ever sees! We are the ones that see and feel the heart ache when these babies get sick and die in our arms from whatever reason. We are also the ones that are first in the field such as during Hurricane Katrina…”—A shelter

“HSUS attempts to cash in on every disaster event that occurs, from floods to earthquakes.  The reality of the situation, as we learned first-hand in the flood of 2008, is that they arrive with cameras, take pictures of what the real workers on the scene are doing, claim that they are making a huge impact on the situation, and beg for money from people who don't know any better.  In fact, they come, they take pictures, they leave.”—A shelter

“I think it’s not right that they market the way they do. I think they need to actually do something. I don't feel like they are really working to solve the problems in the animal rescue world. I feel like they are taking people's money, and misleading them. I think things need to be turned over to local communities.”—A rescue

“I have no respect for the national organizations, they have lost their vision and are doing little to actually help animals in need.  This is especially sad given the amount of money the national organizations take in per year and how little of that money actually goes to helping animals either directly or by sharing that money with smaller grassroots organizations.”—A rescue in Ohio

“Not hands-on. All political BS.”—A rescue

“With the adverts misleading the public thinking they are giving directly to the local animal shelters the HSUS and ASPCA, more of the funding should be given to the local shelters.”—A shelter

“Big business that can use its money to advertise nationally and call in the voices of actors and stars to increase their revenue to pad their own wealth, and to heck with the grass roots groups doing all the work.”—A rescue

“Frankly my dear, they suck!”—A rescue

“The HSUS is an advocacy group who has deceptive fundraising practices. Their advocacy is directed towards progressive causes that are outside of what the typical Humane Society is involved with.”—A rescue

“It does disturb me that there are so many ads asking for money to help the animals and publicity boosts.”—A rescue

“They are a "Hollywood" organization [...] They do not help animals as directly as the small-town rescues do, yet they reap all of the benefits for their employees. They are overpaid solicitors!”—A rescue

“We changed our name … because we in no way want to be affiliated with the Humane Society of the United States.  I personally believe their ad campaigns are deceptive.”—A shelter

“I think they're deceptive in their fundraising and take away funds from local shelters/rescues.”—A rescue

“Shameful that an organization would raise all that money and then not use it for spay/neuter which is what is going to fix that overpopulation problem.  Most people who donate to the HSUS do not care about the veganism that HSUS is promoting.”—A rescue

“People believe they are helping animals in shelters when they give money to HSUS.  HSUS is very misleading in this because they do not make it clear no animals are helped in shelters or rescue.”—A rescue

“It is not an actual shelter or rescue, yet solicits funds by presenting itself as such.”—A rescue

“I question some of the recent moves to promote an extremely different lifestyle from the majority of the public.  As it moves in this direction, the voice of the Humane Society will have less of an impact on the very people it needs to reach to make a lasting change in regards to animal welfare.”—A shelter

“We have contacted them on several issues in our parish for help and never got a response. I feel they put more into payroll and advertisements instead of helping smaller humane societies and shelters.”—A shelter

“I'm sure the majority of people in the world think they financially support shelters, and I believe they intentionally do that. Shelters are in dire straits these days, with donations down, and more animals needing costly medical care. Many animals that could be helped and saved from death are passed over because we cannot afford to save them. In light of that, I would love to see help from the big boys!”—A shelter

“Some of their views have made it very hard for shelters. They offer help but only to a few.”—A shelter

“I believe that the local shelters that are involved in the day to day care of the animals and responsible for getting the animals adopted should be provided with a much greater portion of the national fundraising money. We see so many shelters struggling to stay afloat with the costs of animal care and the current economy only makes it worse. So many animals suffer from the lack of funding for shelters. So many more could be saved if the local shelters benefitted from the donations to the national organizations.”—A foster group

Has HSUS Reached a New Low?

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), not to be confused with your local humane society, regularly runs deceptive ads on TV that help mislead Americans into believing that HSUS is primarily a pet-sheltering organization. (It isn’t.) But a new fundraising ploy targeting children is perhaps the most outrageous scheme yet that we’ve seen HSUS involved in.

The social-game company MindJolt SGN released an HSUS-backed iPhone/iPad game on January 2 called “Fluff Friends Rescue,” in which players can build an animal shelter, rescue animals, adopt animals out, and—last but not least—buy HSUS-branded in-game items, 100 percent of the proceeds of which go to HSUS. One report characterized the game as trying “to raise awareness of what the Humane Society does.”

There’s only one problem: That’s not what HSUS does.

HSUS does not run a pet shelter anywhere. And it gives only 1 percent of its budget to pet shelters. Yet, there’s a whole new game on just that—building and operating a shelter that adopts out cats and dogs. Even HSUS’s CEO admits that only 20 percent of HSUS’s efforts concern pets.

It’s a sick irony that HSUS doesn’t run any shelters and yet there’s a game with HSUS’s logo in it that makes it seem like HSUS does. (In the game, you can build a special HSUS play pen or vet clinics for your rescued animals. You can buy in-game money with real money.) It gets even more nauseating when you consider a target market of this game: Kids.

Even if you know the truth about HSUS, this HSUS-backed game might be planting false seeds in your children’s minds. (Targeting kids, by the way, is straight out of the PETA playbook.)

While this game may instill habits by getting youngsters to buy HSUS stuff early on—presumably, HSUS hopes they’ll keep this up into adulthood—it also has a more nefarious effect: To perpetuate the misperception that HSUS is a pet-shelter group and not the fringe anti-meat group that it is.

According to nationally representative polling, 71 percent of Americans wrongly believe that HSUS is a pet-shelter “umbrella group” while 68 percent mistakenly think that HSUS gives most of its money to pet shelters. (We’ve even heard from HSUS donors who were shocked to find out how little of their donation went to pet shelters.)

Of course, this polling only measures what adults believe. The next generation of adults is playing “Fluff Friends Rescue.”

The game’s creator thinks it “has the potential to hit the top 10 or top 20 games and stay there for a long time.” That’s quite the potential cash stream for HSUS, which is no doubt licking its chops.

Meanwhile, HSUS says that the game is a way to “inform [players] about the hard work of animal rescue groups”—yet the money raised all goes to HSUS, not to true rescue groups. Yes, HSUS does run an animal rescue team, but it’s a small portion of HSUS’s budget. If HSUS wants to become a true rescue group—instead of just raising money like it is one—then by all means, it should. But we suspect HSUS will just keep raising money and banking on public misperception.

It’s hard to believe a “charity” like HSUS can be so unscrupulous. It’s not just a new low for HSUS—it’s a new high in deception.

HSUS: The Hypocrisy Society?

The Humane Society for the United States (HSUS) doesn’t like the new kid on the block. HSUS has been spending inordinate amounts of energy attacking the newly launched Humane Society for Shelter Pets (HSSP), a group whose sole mission is to help shelter pets. HSSP asks animal lovers interested in helping pets to donate to their local shelter instead of funding HSUS. The reasoning behind this request is solid – HSUS gives less than one percent of its money to local shelters, while public polling shows that most Americans mistakenly believe that HSUS gives most of its money to pet shelters.

You’d think HSUS would be committed to honoring donor intent so that shelter pets could be helped. Instead, HSUS CEO Wayne Pacelle settled on personally targeting one of HSSP’s co-directors, Didi Culp. Pacelle sent a letter to Frederick County, MD (Culp’s employer) complaining about a “harmful” video posted on the HSSP website. Sometimes the truth hurts.

It is incomprehensible to think that a person who works for an animal shelter has a conflict of interest by attempting to help raise funds for local pet shelters, if anything she is supporting a mutual interest. She is not benefiting from asking people to donate to local shelters, the pets are benefiting. That is like telling a doctor that he can’t encourage people to donate towards lifesaving medical equipment. But that is just what Pacelle did.

Pacelle pushed a conflict of interest complaint that was allegedly written by a former HSUS wildlife services employee. (We say allegedly because it’s hard to believe she could write all that legalese—it’s a product more befitting of HSUS’s dozens of lawyers.) The complaint claims that Culp has a conflict of interest because the video was filmed on Frederick County property.

Well, we’ve got news for you: Shelters across the country also allowed HSUS to film and photograph in their facilities.

The Tupelo-Lee Humane Society, which contracts with the local government, allowed an HSUS photographer to take photos for a series on HSUS’s website that shows the shelter dogs below an “act now” button. The button, of course, is for donations to HSUS. However, only one percent of the money HSUS raises is given to pet shelters.

Tupelo-Lee isn’t alone; a video with an accompanying HSUS donation pitch was taken of the Caldwell County Animal Control at the Caldwell County fairgrounds. Another video produced by HSUS was shot at the St. Bernard Parish Animal Control Center. HSUS has to work with outside pet shelters, because despite public confusion it doesn’t run any of its own.

So does every shelter that lets HSUS film or take pictures have a conflict of interest? We certainly wouldn’t be making that argument. We don’t see much difference between this and Ms. Culp using the shelter she works at as the backdrop to film her informational video. One difference may be that the Humane Society for Shelter Pets only encourages people to give to their local shelter, while HSUS seeks to raise money from its use of the shelters—which, somewhat ironically, furthers the confusion that HSUS gives most of its money to pet shelters.

The hypocrisy of HSUS is so out of control, we wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Wayne Pacelle thinks a convicted dogfighting kingpin would be a good pet owner. Oh, wait.