Creeping HSUS Kudzu in California
The Humane Society of the United States has a PETA-like agenda. But unlike PETA, HSUS is smart enough to know it can’t demand total animal liberation and expect it to just happen. It has a much more deliberate long-term approach to end most uses of animals.
In regards to hunting, HSUS CEO Wayne Pacelle outlined his strategy some years ago: “We are going to use the ballot box and the democratic process to stop all hunting in the United States… We will take it species by species until all hunting is stopped in California. Then we will take it state by state.”
He may not even need the ballot box.
HSUS is pressuring the California Fish and Game Commission to enact a whole host of anti-hunting regulations, including banning the hunting of bobcats. Other restrictions on HSUS’s wish list include banning the use of calls for coyotes and other species.
You may recall that last year HSUS succeeded in getting the California legislature to ban the use of lead ammunition, which will require hunters to use more expensive rounds. Now that that fight is over, HSUS is back with a laundry list of demands to make it harder to hunt.
Sound familiar? HSUS has the same strategy for ending all animal agriculture. HSUS is against cheese, butter, milk, ice cream, bacon, pork chops, burgers—anything that comes from an animal. But it doesn’t say this outright, since 99% of America isn’t vegan. Instead HSUS takes an incremental strategy—moving the goalposts. Consider what HSUS VP Miyun Park said to a HSUS-friendly crowd:
We don’t want any of these animals to be raised and killed … [but] we don’t have the luxury of waiting until we have the opportunity to get rid of the entire [animal agriculture] industry. …
We have a very active cage-free campaign. Are we saying that cage-free eggs are the way to go? No, that’s not what we’re saying. But we’re saying it’s a step in the right direction…
HSUS CEO Wayne Pacelle explained the long-term goals of banning hunting to the author of the book Bloodties, saying of hunting: “We’re out to minimize suffering wherever it can be done, and wherever our limited resources can be utilized most effectively—abusive forms of hunting for now, all hunting eventually.” (Pacelle was answering a question about the practicalities of banning fishing—a campaign he didn’t want to wage merely because fish aren’t cute.)
HSUS says today that it only “actively seeks to eliminate the most inhumane and unfair sporthunting practices.” Does anyone really believe it isn’t against all hunting—even for subsistence?
