A SOCIAL MOVEMENT THAT WOULD BENEFIT FROM CULTURAL MOVEMENT

Convincing the average omnivore that animal rights, or better said, animal protection matters is not an easy task. It is a social movement about change. Reading an article in today's NY Times Magazine about this exact challenge I wondered how Cultural Movement could make a difference.

"Social change," you ask? Don't most people want to protect animals? When I use "animal" I don't only mean house pets, but also farm animals. I've always been strongly opposed to the poor treatment of any animal, and while living in Europe, I steadfastly supported changes introduced by countries like Sweden and Holland for better farm animal protection. However, these social changes were not brought about by referenda, they were decisions made by governments working together with industry. Here in the US, it takes the kind of successful vote the Humane Society is campaigning for in California coming up in November, called Proposition 2, a sweeping California ballot initiative designed to improve the lives of millions of farm animals. Transformational change cannot happen at the edges of society, it has to happen in the broad middle section of society. And this is where strategy and marketing matter.

In an article in the New York Times magazine, entitled The Barnyard Strategist, it is clear from some paragraphs in the article that Wayne Pacelle, the leader of the Humane Society, understands this.

"Proposition 2 also marks a seminal moment for Pacelle, who, since he became the head of the Humane Society four years ago, has transformed America’s largest animal-welfare group — long known as a kindly protector of the nation’s dogs and cats — into an organization he likens to a National Rifle Association for the animal movement: a savvy, unapologetically aggressive political player. He has amped up his 10.3-million-member organization by merging with several smaller animal-welfare groups, cherry-picking some of their top leaders and boosting his budget from $75 million to $127 million, making the Humane Society the richest and most powerful animal-welfare group in the country, with its own in-house investigation, litigation and campaign teams."

"And though his organization still does plenty for cats and dogs, Pacelle has made farm animals a top priority over the past four years. “Nine billion animals are killed for food every year, and most of them are confined in intensive conditions,” he told his staff members not long after he was appointed president of the organization in 2004. “It is the greatest abuse of animals that occurs on this planet.”

"The question, as Pacelle sees it, is how to create change when Big Agriculture, with its big money, has made it nearly impossible to get meaningful farm-animal-welfare legislation passed. Here the ballot-initiative process is crucial, since it offers an end run around legislators by taking issues directly to voters. Another key element in Pacelle’s strategy has been to create ballot measures that offer only modest reforms on which both vegans and hamburger lovers (at least many of them) can agree. That tactic, however, has earned Pacelle his share of critics, including some who claim that while the ballot initiatives may seem moderate, they are just a first step in a vegan agenda to dictate what Americans eat. On the other side, extreme vegan groups say Pacelle has sold out, giving carnivores a reason to feel virtuous about eating “happy meat.” Pacelle counters that he can’t please everybody: “Part of my job is to challenge certain orthodoxies. For people who want a vegan revolution — that’s too passive for me.”

"Instead, Pacelle says he can see the potential to influence millions of animal lovers by pushing them to expand their concerns, moving beyond the cuddly dogs and cats — and the baby seals and dolphins — that capture Americans’ attention to include the billions of less-visible and far-less- romanticized pigs, cows and chickens raised for food every year."

Comments

[skippy]

This is a move by HSUS to end all farming in the United States. HSUS has lied to farmers in the South and East. Closing down small farmers along with factory farms.