I attended an HSUS “Town Hall Meeting” in Las Vegas. Wayne Pacelle, the president of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is going around the country giving presentations about the HSUS and about animal issues in general.

Here are my brief notes from the meeting in Vegas:

Good news:

• Most people care about animals, they’re just ignorant about animal issues. They don’t know what they can do to make a difference. It’s up to us to teach them.
• Pacelle predicts that greyhound racing is on it’s way out. It only has a few more years left.
• HSUS plans a big ‘adopt a shelter pet’ TV commercial campaign next year with the Ad Council.

Bad news:

• The animal movement has limited resources and is forced to triage. The HSUS can’t be everything to everyone.

Some of the issues that are important in Nevada:

• Animals in shelters: Vegas has a high shelter animal kill rate largely due to low adoption rates. If we could just get more people to adopt instead of buy, we could virtually solve the problem. Just a small increase of about 10-20% could fix the problem. More info here.
• Puppymills: This is a huge problem. There are tons of stores around the valley selling puppies from puppymills. We need to ban puppymills. More info here.
• Wild horses: The majority of our nation’s wild horses live in Nevada. They are being killed needlessly. There are new humane horse population control methods available that the HSUS will help promote. More info here.
• Veganism: Eat lower on the food chain and save animals, the planet, and your health. Even part-time vegetarians can make a difference. If everyone reduced their meat consumption by 10%, that would be better than doubling the number of vegans. More info from the HSUS here.

My thoughts:

• People: I agree that most people care about animals, they’re just ignorant about animal issues and don’t know what they can do to help. They get apathetic quickly and give up easily. They don’t just need education, they need inspiration, too.
• Vegan Education: I see vegan education and meat-reduction as hand-in-hand. Even purely promoting veganism, we inspire meat-reduction. I would love to see the HSUS get more involved in that, but I do think they’re making some progress.
• Horses: I think the wild horse problem stems from the shelter animal problem: it’s a perception that humans should intervene with nature, take control, and kill populations it determines are “excess.” We’ve simply taken the concept of rounding up stray cats and dogs and killing them and applied that concept to horses. The root of the problem is not lack of adoptions, lack of resources, or anything else. The root of the problem is an acceptance of the idea that euthanasia is an acceptable solution to these kinds of problems. We MUST reject the immoral concept that killing animals can solve problems. It can’t.
• Puppymills: Honestly, I think this problem could be solved in fewer than five years if courageous people began doing video-taped open-rescue at puppymills and posting those videos online. (It might require live video capture and web streaming ala JustinTV in order to ensure no interception between video capture and public education.) I feel there are enough dog-lovers to make this type of activism 100% effective at banning puppymills. Of course, I could be wrong. Make your own decisions.
• Reactions: At the meeting, quite a few people were angry about the HSUS’s decision to work with Michael Vick. Others were angry that the HSUS isn’t involved enough in local Vegas activities. Many people were upset the HSUS wasn’t more involved in their particular issue, be it cat and dog shelters or be it vivisection or be it veganism… It’s frustrating to me to see so many caring people who work hard to save animals’ lives feel like they need support from large organizations like the HSUS in order to be effective. Obviously, the HSUS is powerful and we’d all love it if they took on our specific causes, but that’s not going to happen. We can’t sit back and wait for large organizations to steer us in the right direction, we have to take action ourselves and demand attention for the animals. Do what you can for the animal causes you’re most interested and try not to step on other animal advocates’ toes.

If you want to attend a Town Hall Meeting, go here >>

If you have attended one of these meetings, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please leave a comment below.

Sections: Vegan News
Topics: horses, hsus, nevada, puppymills, shelter animals, veg, Vegan, vegas, wayne pacelle