This week, I led the latest quarterly call with a few key staff members of The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and nearly 50 farmers and ranchers, each a volunteer member of our agriculture advisory councils. We talked about our urgent efforts to defeat Oklahoma’s “right to farm” ballot measure that would benefit foreign-owned corporate agribusiness at the expense of family farmers, to strengthen the federal definition of “organic” to include strong animal welfare standards, and to stop the pork and beef lobbying groups from pilfering “check-off” funds paid into a federal market promotion program by rank-and-file farmers.
HSUS and these ranchers and farmers are aligned on all of the above-mentioned policy goals. They bring special knowledge and perspective to our work, enhancing our impact as well as the diversity of our cause.
Within our ranks are also an unquantified number of vegans and vegetarians, who demonstrate their passion and commitment to the cause of animal protection by enjoying only plant-based foods.
And the largest group of our supporters love animals and eat meat. They’re not monolithic in their thinking, but it’s safe to say that many of them grapple with their diet and what it means to be humane. Increasing numbers of them opt for more plant-based eating options and also seek out animal products from farms that strive to adhere to higher animal welfare standards.
This is a fantastically varied group, and it’s just the way I like it. I subscribe to a big tent theory, calling on all rational actors to do their best when it comes to their personal and commercial relationships with animals. While cruelty is never acceptable, there are a range of choices people can make and still claim the mantle of an animal protection advocate. We celebrate everybody moving in the right direction. Progress, not perfection, is our metric.
I take this tack partly because my own formative experience reminds me that there’s so much complexity associated with food and diet and our relationship with animals. My dad was a high school football coach of Italian descent, and my mother a homemaker and part-time secretary of Greek lineage. They carried with them their culinary traditions, and that meant we had plenty of spaghetti and meatballs and gyros with lamb, along with plenty of conventional American fare. Our choices were driven primarily by tradition, cost and convenience, and our tastes, and not by any intention to hurt animals.
In college, after learning the details of factory farming, I realized there was more to the matter of food than personal preference. There were moral questions that were the hidden ingredients in every meal. So appalled by images of animals jammed in crates and crowded together in windowless buildings, I decided to cleanse my diet of animal products.
Plant-based eating is the right personal choice for me. But being vegan for the past three decades hasn’t induced amnesia. I know that even when I was eating meat, I still loved animals. Like most people, I just didn’t live up to my own highest ideals when it came to food choices. I was one of many who subordinated core values about animal treatment to appetite.
In thinking about reforming the food production system—which over the past 60 years has become needlessly harsh on animals—I want to enlist all people of conscience to help turn the situation around. That includes the vegans, vegetarians, conscious omnivores, and farmers and ranchers who practice high standards of animal husbandry. Each has an important role to play in changing the way we deliver food to the table and how we as a society sort through agriculture policies.
I get quite a bit of grief from some vegans for inviting and welcoming the farmers into the tent. And some of the farmers don’t quite trust the vegans in our ranks. So be it. That’s the uncomfortable place where lines are not drawn perfectly and where all forms of forward movement are celebrated.
It’s working. This Election Day, we expect to lead Massachusetts voters to embrace a ballot measure to forbid extreme confinement on factory farms and require food retailers to sell only animal products from farms that conform. We have a real shot at beating back Oklahoma’s radical “right to farm” measure. Over the last 15 months, we’ve worked with more than 200 food retailers, from McDonald’s to Walmart to Cracker Barrel, to change their purchasing practices and to eschew the extreme confinement of animals in their supply chains.
Writing for the WEEKLY STANDARD, Joseph J. Eule charged that we’re too vegan and inattentive to the farmers, which painted a distortion. In other forums, we’ve had very committed vegans do their own false framing, arguing that we’ve sold out and we are consigning animals to slaughter because we don’t say that being vegan is the only way forward.
When it comes to agriculture, we need more farmers with animals on the land, and fewer animals caught up in factory farms. We should be eating more plant-based foods, and when we eat animal products, valuing them more and reaching for a more humane and sustainable standard—supporting the farmers who are striving to do better for animals. If we do so, we’ll be healthier, spare animals a tremendous amount of suffering, protect our land and water, and strengthen our food system, our traditional family farmers, and our rural communities.
Wayne Pacelle is president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States, and author of The Humane Economy: How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers Are Transforming the Lives of Animals.
