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HSUS takes it to the streets
Story Date: 12/17/2012
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Source: Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE, 12/14/12
Activists have used billboards as a favorite channel for their message, but the Humane Society of the United States has taken the idea further: The organization has wrapped one municipal bus in each of two cities with their message protesting the use of gestation stalls. The campaign is ongoing in the District of Columbia — and in Des Moines, Iowa.
“The ads have been placed … to raise awareness about the intransigence of companies and producers that continue to defend the use of gestation crates, even while so many other many pork producers and retailers have committed to phasing them out,” the organization said in a news release about the campaign.
The ads direct interested consumers to its website, which now has an ongoing petition for consumers to sign to urge pork producers to stop using gestation stalls.
HSUS has ramped up its anti-gestation stall campaign in the last 18 months, and has secured promises from most major restaurant companies and producers that they will seek to phase out the equipment over a period of time, typically in about 10 years.
Industry response
In response, R.C. Hunt, a North Carolina hog farmer and president of the National Pork Producers Council, said in a statement sent to Meatingplace, "It is unfortunate that people in Des Moines and Washington, D.C., have to experience such uninformed propaganda from a radical special interest group. ... We wonder what [HSUS's] contributors think about their money being spent on this uninformed propaganda rather than going to the local animal shelters they were told it would go to in fundraising solicitations.
"America’s hog farmers are ... committed to producing safe, affordable and healthful foods for consumers, using production practices that have been designed with input from veterinarians and other animal-care experts."
Meanwhile
SUPERVALU supermarkets on Friday publicly announced its goal of eliminating gestation stalls from its supply chain.
In a statement sent to Meatingplace — that SUPERVALU had shared with its suppliers in November — the company said, "In light of the growing concerns regarding the use of gestation crates for sow housing, we have initiated a company review of this practice. Specifically, we have engaged our pork suppliers to better understand their plans for transitioning away from the use of gestation crates ... and are asking our suppliers to present us with plans for potential alternatives to gestation crates within the next five years, by 2017."
For more stories, go to http://www.meatingplace.com/.
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