“For Animal Liberation to Become Possible”

Paul Shapiro is a member of the “Animal Rights Hall of Fame,” and in charge of anti-animal-agriculture campaigns at the Humane Society of the United States—a moderate-sounding animal rights group that most Americans believe is affiliated with their local humane societies. (This is not the case.)

Appealing to mainstream values is a strategy that the Humane Society of the United States employs constantly, but the group’s end goal is far out on the fringe: By the “humane” treatment of animals, HSUS means an end to all human uses of animals, whether on the farm, in medical schools, at the zoo, or on the dinner table. That’s something mainstream Americans just don’t agree with.

Skeptical? Before Shapiro adopted HSUS’s more moderate “animal protection” tone, he was all about “animal liberation.”

The Harold D. Guither HSUS Archive

In the HumaneWatch Document Library you can already see two significant archives of documents originally collected by others. One is a set of papers from the late Amy Freeman Lee, a 30-year veteran of HSUS’s Board of Directors. The other is an extensive set of controversial, internal HSUS Board documents from former Board member Susan Pepperdine.

Today, through the courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives, we’re releasing a third such "special collection": The Harold D. Guither HSUS Archive.

Harold Guither was an agricultural economics professor at the University of Illinois until he retired in 1995. In his 1998 book, Animal Rights: History and Scope of a Radical Social Movement, Guither profiled HSUS, PETA, the “Physicians Committee” for Responsible Medicine, and other liberate-the-lab-rats groups. (We reviewed that book last month.)

This archive largely includes items from the early 1990s, with a few from the 1980s. It includes gems like a speech from then-CEO John Hoyt to the California Farm Bureau Federation about HSUS and vegetarianism; HSUS catalogs full of endless tchotchkes; and some comparatively radical writings of former HSUS vice president Michael W. Fox.

Click here for a full list of these documents and direct links to download them all.

2004: The Year the Tide Turned

In case you’re wondering, the Humane Society of the United States wasn’t always PETA’s suit-wearing older brother. More and more, it’s looking like HSUS married into the activist family right around 2004.

To see the difference, compare what HSUS’s annual reports have chosen to emphasize in recent years. In 2000, the big news included an expansion of HSUS’s "Pets for Life" animal-adoption campaign, the "Kindred Spirits" memorial program for people who have lost their pets, and a section titled, "We Don't Run Shelters, We Help Shelters Run Better." This kind of literature is what you might expect from a group with “Humane Society” in its name.

Now look at 2009 (the most recent annual report available), when the focus had little to do with pets at all. It’s all about regulating animal treatment, banning the commercial sale of animal products, “investigating” cattle ranches in a quasi-legal undercover fashion, and running programs to keep hunters away from wildlife.

So what was the turning point? If you guessed Wayne Pacelle becoming CEO in 2004, you win a vegan cookie.