An effort to work together

What a disappointment to read Randal Berry’s scattershot attack on me and the Humane Society of the United States that appeared in Perspective on Aug. 13. It was sparked by the invitation I received to appear at the national conference of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the organization that maintains rigorous standards for accreditation for its member institutions. Berry at one time worked for the Little Rock Zoo as a keeper, and is apparently in touch with professional operatives attacking HSUS on behalf of animal cruelty perpetrators, since he repeated so many of their canards and caricatures chapter and verse.

I’ve spoken at many zoos around the country through the years, and gave a keynote at a conference hosted by the Detroit Zoo that brought together animal welfare leaders, zoo leaders, and scientists to talk about advancing animal welfare. At that conference, I once again reiterated my support for AZA-accredited zoos.

There was nearly unanimous agreement among participants about the value of AZA-accredited zoos and mainstream animal welfare advocates uniting. HSUS values the important work of the Little Rock Zoo and strongly supports its current leadership. The Little Rock Zoo and HSUS have partnered on important legislation to protect wild and exotic animals, and HSUS has long supported the Zoo’s conservation education efforts.

Berry is apparently unaware of the progress that zoos have made on the issue and is still carrying an us versus-them banner, even after he’s been long gone as a reptile keeper at the zoo. He trots out so many false claims about me and HSUS that it’s hard to know where to begin. He says we’re against the slaughter of animals for food, but I wonder how he squares that claim with the reality that HSUS has a National Agriculture Advisory Council and 11 state agriculture councils, with every member a working farmer or rancher and also a leader at HSUS. We have farmers on our staff, including a fourth-generation cattle rancher from Tennessee. If Berry is a serious-minded person, he has some fact-checking to do.

It was HSUS that worked to pass the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act in the Congress in 1958, and we’ve been committed to those issues ever since. In the last five years, we’ve negotiated more than 300 agreements with the biggest food retailers—from McDonald’s to Wal-Mart to Cracker Barrel— to modify their purchasing practices to improve the lives of animals.

Berry goes so far as to suggest I don’t love animals. That will be news to my rescue beagle, who comes to the office with me every day and is my beloved sidekick just about everywhere I go. And it will be news to my rescue cat, who often drapes herself around my neck. I encourage Mr. Berry to read my New York Times best-selling book on the deep connection that I and so many others feel for animals titled The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them.

Yes, among some, HSUS is controversial— among puppy millers,

“kill buyers” in the horse slaughter business, animal fighters, wildlife traffickers and whalers, and other people and industries who are perpetrators of animal cruelty. As long as I’m around the organization, it’ll stay that way.

HSUS and its affiliates are the largest provider of animal care in the world, touching in 2016 more than 300,000 animals through our animal rescue deployments, rural veterinary programs, international street dog sterilization and vaccination programs, wildlife response teams, and direct care sanctuaries and rehabilitation centers. But we cannot rescue our way out of the problems of animal cruelty. That’s why in addition to setting the country on a trajectory to end the extreme and intensive confinement of animals in agriculture, we’ve also driven these other reforms:

We’ve made malicious animal cruelty a felony and outlawed dogfighting and cockfighting in every state. In the mid-1980s, only four U.S. states had felony penalties for malicious acts of cruelty.

Our campaign against Canada’s commercial seal hunt has saved 1.4 million seals from being clubbed or shot in the last decade, and we’ve fought alongside others in dramatically reducing the global killing of whales.

We’ve helped to drive down euthanasia rates by 90 percent since we launched our campaign in the 1960s to promote spay-or-neuter and adoption. Today, there are 1.5 million adoptable cats and dogs euthanized in shelters every year, compared to more than 15 million in 1970.

We’ve also spearheaded the effort to crack down on the ivory trade and other forms of wildlife trafficking, passing bills in more than a dozen key states and backing federal rules on the topic.

We’re proud to work with law enforcement across the country and to work with retailers like Wal-Mart. And we’re pleased to have a strong working relationship with AZA and other reputable groups on animal welfare. We work in all 50 states, and now in more than 50 nations throughout the world. To learn about our work, go to www.humanesociety.org.