In a new book, “The Humane Economy,” Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, says that in widely different industries, from agriculture and tourism to medicine and beauty products, consumers’ purchasing power is prompting companies to improve their animal-welfare standards, says Civil Eats. Within agriculture, the HSUS is a prominent campaigner against sow crates and battery cages for egg-laying hens.
“It’s clear we’re on the trajectory of ending extreme confinement of animals in agriculture,” Pacelle told Civil Eats. Within a decade, he said, the close confinement of pigs, chickens, and veal calves “will be a thing of the past.” Pacelle said the next step in farm animal welfare involves the breeding and slaughtering of poultry.
Pacelle and HSUS are regarded as troublemakers by farm groups and the meat industry. They say the group advocates practices that are expensive to implement, such as remodeling barns, or that threaten thin profit margins because they are less efficient. Some in the meat industry say HSUS wants to hobble or destroy meat production.
Civil Eats says Pacelle’s book “is slim on information about other activists and organizations besides HSUS that have done good farm animal welfare work, and it doesn’t provide much in the way of behind-the-scenes details about the way HSUS works.” For example, it doesn’t go into detail on the unsuccessful 2011 agreement between HSUS and the egg industry on poultry housing standards.
In an excerpt from the book, Pacelle says, “There’s a groundswell among consumers who not only believe that animals matter but also put those principles into action and make choices that drive change in the marketplace. This freshly-turned economic soil nurtures legions of hungry entrepreneurs who are imagining better ways to produce goods and services that do less or no harm to animals.”