By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

COLUMBUS, Ohio—The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is coming to Ohio and the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation (OFBF) is gearing up. 

“The Humane Society has been working across the country,” said Jack Fisher, OFBF executive vice president. “They started in Florida with a ballot initiative; they went to Arizona and then last fall to California with Proposition 2 which dealt with the housing practices for poultry pork and veal.

“They were successful there with passing a ballot initiative by a 63 to 37 percent margin that phases out the use of battery cages (a confinement system) in poultry, gestation crates in pork and veal crates and tethering in the veal industry,” Fisher said.

In February Humane Society CEO Wayne Pacelle, Paul Shapiro, their leading farm activist, and Dean Vickers, head of the Ohio Chapter of HSUS met with Ohio Farm Bureau leaders, the Ohio Cattleman’s Assoc., Ohio Pork Producers Council, the Ohio Poultry Assoc., and the Ohio Veterinary Medical Assoc.

“They would like to encourage Ohio agriculture to pursue joint legislative efforts to do the same thing in Ohio that the ballot initiative did in California,” Fisher said.

“They let us know what their polling shows, that they think they’re in a very strong position.”

Fisher, who emphasized that HSUS is a different organization than the humane shelters at the county level, said they are a formidable opponent.

“They have over $120 million in recent financial statements at their disposal,” he said. “They have approaching 11 million members across the country and they’re very effective at what they do.”
The Humane Society stressed that their proposals are common sense, that animal care animal welfare should include the ability for an animal to stand up, lie down, turn around spread their wings without touching another animal or and part of their enclosure. Fisher said that’s not the whole story.

“They would like to do away with all livestock production for food,” he said.

“They would like to take animal proteins out of our diet; take away the choice of what we eat not only in the United States but in the world market. We really think deep down their initiative is about promoting vegetarianism. That is their hidden agenda, we feel.”
Beyond livestock animals, HSUS has strong beliefs about zoos and aquariums. They would like to modify those operations. They’re opposed to the use of animals in any type of research. They would be opposed to hunting and fishing, Fisher said.

Yet Farm Bureau realizes there is a strong consumer movement wanting to ensure that the industry does everything possible to properly care for animals.

That, Fisher said, goes back to the fact that people are becoming farther removed from the farm.

They have not had any experience with animal care on a farm. Their experience with animals consists of companion animals which are considered part of the family.

“We need to find a way to give emotional comfort to our consumers in terms of livestock production,” Fisher said. “We need to be more transparent.”

Fisher encouraged everyone involved in production agriculture and specifically livestock production to become involved in this situation. There will need to be an ongoing, internal conversation, he said.
“There are a lot of unintended consequences here if we continue to phase out some of these very effective housing practices in livestock production,” Fisher said. “Unintended consequences include shortage of food, increased costs, and long term we could be moving a lot of our food production to other countries if we don’t go about this in a very visionary way to satisfy consumers and allow farmers to do what they do best and that is to produce wholesome food at an economical price.”