The Meeting

Thursday, March 5, 2009
Humane society: Ohio, here we come
by Andrea Zippay

SALEM, Ohio — Ohio farmers, you’ve had your warning.

The Humane Society of the United States — the group who’s successfully outlawed hen cages, veal crates and gestation stalls in California, Arizona and Florida — has its eye on doing the same in the Buckeye State.

The organization sent representatives to Columbus in February to make sure the state’s livestock industry knows it’s watching.

They asked

The Feb. 17 meeting, which came at the request of the humane society, involved three of that organization’s staffers as well as representatives of Ohio’s poultry, beef, pork and veterinary medical associations, plus the Farm Bureau.

The purpose of their visit? “To get all the industry reps to go back to their individual groups and gain the authority to negotiate with the humane society on legislation in Ohio,” according to Farm Bureau’s Joe Cornely. Read More

These meetings have been being held in several states. HSUS meets with leaders of the agricultural groups in the state and tells them to either negotiate with them or they will force the changes at the ballot box. The problem is that it does us no good to negotiate with them. In order to have a good faith negotiation each side must be able to offer something that the other wants. HSUS has nothing that agriculture wants, but they have everything to gain from us. Being active in your communities, telling the story of agriculture, is how the push toward a vegan society can be stopped. It just requires the efforts of everyone in agriculture to accomplish it.