Letter to the Editor Regarding Humanewatch and Humanewatch Shill, Jake Geis

The following letter was published in the November 23rd, 2010 issue of the University of Nebraska Newspaper, The Daily Nebraskan. It was the most commented article for about 2 weeks after it was published, until the letter, and all links to it disappeared from the site (typically, letters to the editor remain permanently in the site archives). When I inquired about its disappearance I was ignored. I suspect the letter was censored by Daily Nebraskan staff at the request of higher ups at the University of Nebraska, which is heavily invested in corporate factory farming - which Humanewatch exists to protect. A worker at the Daily Nebraskan (whom I will not name) confirmed that this has never been a problem in the past and that someone would have had to go in and delete it from the site archives. Very telling is the motto of University of Nebraska's Animal Science department: "Serving animal industry".

Dear Editor,

In the November 18^th issue of the Daily Nebraskan, Jake Geis wrote an article that was extremely critical of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). In this article, Geis (ironically a second year veterinary student) parrots the specious arguments of Humanewatch.org – a Center for Consumer Freedom front group. The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) is a propaganda group for hire that receives millions in corporate “donations” as payment for smearing groups which they feel may hurt their bottom line. CCF has created dozens of these offshoot “front” groups in order to run smear campaigns against public interest groups like: Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) when they were hired by the liquor industry to oppose MADD’s work toward blood alcohol limits; the Center for Science in the Public Interest when hired by the fast food industry to downplay the negative health effects of trans-fats and obesity; the Center for Disease Control (CDC) when hired by the seafood industry in an attempt to discredit the CDC’s claims about the dangers of mercury in seafood; organized labor as a whole through its front groups Center for Union Facts and Employee Freedom Action Committee – in order to defend low wages; and now they have been hired by big agribusiness corporations in order to slander groups that propose animal welfare and environmental standards – standards which corporations feel would hurt their multi-billion dollar profit margins.

Humanewatch and CCF were created by Richard Berman, a Washington D.C. lobbyist, with the help of a $600,000 grant from the Phillip Morris Tobacco Corporation to fight anti-smoking groups. Humanewatch is listed by the IRS as a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization, but this “non-profit” funnels 92% of its multi-million dollar corporate “donations” into Berman’s PR firm Berman & Company. By exploiting this legal loophole Berman is able to forego transparency standards for non-profits and acquire all of these millions of dollars as tax-free profits. 

CCF’s groups are notorious for their cunning sophistry, often framing issues in a way that makes their arguments seem sound and rational – unfortunately Geis falls right into this trap. The Humanewatch claim about HSUS allocating only 1% of its donations to local shelters is a clear example of this. HSUS has never purported to be connected to local shelters or to fund them, on their website they state very clearly: “Local humane societies and SPCAs are independent entities and are not run by The HSUS or any other national entity. The HSUS works with local humane societies and supports their work through training, evaluations, publications, and other professional services. Additionally, The HSUS operates its own network of animal sanctuaries and rescue operations, providing emergency care and homes to more animals than any other organization in the United States.” It should be noted that the first humane societies were set up to promote the welfare of the most vulnerable – children (this aspect was eventually phased out as other child advocacy groups took over) and animals, i.e. they were welfare organizations which advocated for and were concerned with the treatment of all animals, they did not focus solely on sheltering lost or unwanted companion animals – a tradition which the HSUS has continued. Today’s humane societies exist primarily as companion animal shelters, set up in order to contain the perennial companion animal overpopulation problem – they do little to no animal welfare advocacy other than companion animal spay/neuter and vaccination programs; this leaves the majority of the animals in the US – “food animals” without representation, besides the HSUS.

Geis goes on to site a news broadcast by WSB-TV, an Atlanta ABC affiliate, as evidence of HSUS wrongdoing concerning Hurricane Katrina donations, but again, he fails to check his sources; in this case the TV station realized that they had been given bogus information by Humanewatch – in response they immediately issued a televised correction, pulled the footage, and wrote a “cease and desist” letter to Humanewatch who was posting the copied video without permission and without the correction. CCF’s Humanewatch has continuously stooped to outright lying in order to smear animal welfare groups such as HSUS – they were even forced to issue a formal retraction after falsely accusing HSUS of funding international terrorism. Geis makes many other claims in his article, some are unintentionally comical, like when he refers to a modest California animal welfare initiative (which set standards that would allow animals the room to stand up, turn around and stretch their wings/limbs) as “anti-meat”; an official HSUS rebuttal of all of these CCF-dervied claims can be viewed here: http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/opposition/misc/hsus_responds_to_ccf.html.

Nebraskans who care about animal welfare should be aware that there is a corporate-funded disinformation campaign being waged against groups and individuals that put lives over corporate profits and should therefore be extremely discerning when it comes to where they obtain their information.

Sincerely,


Brian Ellis, Licensed Veterinary Technician