Archive for category: Press Room

The familiar “circus train” animal cracker box

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) is hyping the success of its recent effort to persuade Nabisco, the maker of Barnum’s Animal Crackers, to redesign the snack’s package by removing the circus cages that formerly appeared on the box. The radical animal rights group, famous for its pointless publicity stunts, hasn’t explained how the new package design will enhance the lives of elephants, lions or giraffes in the wild.

An August 21 story in the New York Post reported that Nabisco agreed to redesign the box “to keep this brand modern and contemporary.” PeTA’s pitch to Nabisco highlighted the “egregious cruelty” inherent in caging animals.

If anybody understands egregious cruelty, it’s PeTA. For the past several years, the organization’s gratuitous euthanasia of “rescued” cats and dogs has been a national scandal. Since 1998, PeTA has killed more than 36,000 pets that supposedly were being taken to PeTA-operated shelters for placement in adoptive homes. Instead, most of the animals were euthanized within 24 hours of being seized by PeTA employees.

The website “PetaKillsAnimals.com” reports one highly publicized incident in 2014, when PeTA staffers actually seized a pet chihuahua from a family’s backyard. The family  protested, only to learn that the dog already had been euthanized. The family sued PeTA, and the PeTA employees were charged with larceny.

It’s ironic that Nabisco would buy the “egregious cruelty” argument from an organization that has killed more animals over the past 20 years than any zoo or circus in existence. Somebody at Nabisco failed to do their homework. We wouldn’t be surprised if a few people quit buying Barnum’s Animal Crackers just to make that point.

The new “cage-free” box

The NGA has responded to an August 14 article in the Washington Post that was chock-full of misinformation, courtesy of Grey2K. Here’s the full text of the NGA letter to the Post, which was submitted over the signature of NGA Executive Director Jim Gartland.

DEAR EDITOR:

The August 14 article about the proposed Constitutional amendment to ban greyhound racing in Florida contained some serious factual errors, many of which can be traced back to the radical animal rights groups behind this initiative.

For example, it is untrue that greyhound racing has been “banned” in 40 states. In the vast majority of states, greyhound racing never existed in the first place because these states never authorized pari-mutuel wagering on dogs. Only one state has ever passed a statewide voter referendum to ban greyhound racing.

Contrary to Grey2K claims, greyhounds are not given performance-enhancing drugs. Drug testing by Florida officials over the past 10 years found only 71 out of 440,586 urine samples where miniscule traces of drugs were present, likely due to environmental contamination.

Animal rights claims about greyhound injuries also are groundless. Qualified veterinary research has found that the injury rate in greyhound racing is less than two-tenths of one percent. Most greyhound injuries are minor, allowing the greyhound to resume racing after a few weeks or retire into a loving home.

These misrepresentations are nothing new, but they could do serious harm in Florida. Nearly 13,000 workers are employed, directly and indirectly, in greyhound racing in that state. Track employees, kennel workers, and workers in the small businesses who supply goods and services to greyhound racing will lose their jobs if the greyhound ban passes.

We can only hope that Florida voters base their votes on common sense and not on false animal rights claims.

s/Jim Gartland, Executive Director, National Greyhound Association

In the wake of a sexual harassment scandal that drove CEO Wayne Pacelle out of the top job at Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the group has now lost its accreditation as a charity from several of the nation’s leading charity rating groups, including the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and Charity Navigator.

Humanewatch.org is reporting that the BBB’s charity oversight arm, the Wise Giving Alliance (WGA), has revoked HSUS’ charity status, and Charity Navigator has downgraded its rating to 2 out of 4 stars, with a 1 for poor financial management at the animal rights organization. The news was also reported by several agriculture groups, including Michigan Farm News, Drovers Online, Dairy Herd Management, and Protect the Harvest.

Another oversight group, Animal Charity Evaluators, rescinded its recommendation of HSUS, saying that “ethical leadership and a healthy work environment are critical components of an effective charity.”

Since news of the sexual harassment scandal broke in January, HSUS has struggled to regain its footing. A March 23 story in the Washington Post reported that sexual harassment allegations are not new to HSUS. The woman who succeeded Pacelle as CEO, Kitty Block, was a young lawyer at HSUS twenty-three years ago, when she and a colleague sued her boss, David Wills, then the organization’s Vice President for Investigations, for sexual harassment. Wills was fired as a result of the complaints.

The Post story also reported that some of HSUS’ six-figure donors are outraged that HSUS funds have been used to pay legal settlements related to sexual harassment claims.   At least one of those donors, according to the report, is encouraging others to withhold financial support “until a full internal investigation has been completed and all current board members resign except those who voted to remove Pacelle.”