Animal rights group signature gatherers sent packing at farmers market
The organization states its goal is to back a “citizen-backed ballot initiative to prevent some of the cruelest factory farming practices in Ohio. The measure will require the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board to adopt certain minimum standards that will prevent animal cruelty, improve health and food safety, support family farms and safeguard the environment throughout the state of Ohio.” However, in November of 2009, Ohioans overwhelmingly passed a measure to create their own Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board, with agricultural, farming, and veterinary personnel, a local Humane Society representative, and other expert Ohio citizens serving to carefully evaluate the ongoing state of agricultural animal care across the state and establish care standards. The Humane Society US hopes to impose its own standards on to the Ohio-based and Ohio-run Livestock Care Standards Board.
According to the HSUS, they are proceeding because “it’s a good idea…to ensure that the (Ohio) Board has some very basic rules of the road.”
The HSUS petition, which would alter Ohio’s state constitution (article XIV, section 2), would dictate to the Ohio Board minimum care standards for the raising of cows, poultry, and pigs, rather than allowing the Ohio board to establish these standards after public input. HSUS has stated: “The HSUS promotes eating with conscience…replacing meat and other animal-based foods in the diet with plant-based foods.”
The HSUS is now employing workers, at a rate ranging from 70 cents to $1 per signature, to travel throughout Ohio to gather petitions to put the issue on the November ballot. Fifteen such workers were in Tuscarawas County last week. At a recent Tuscarawas Valley Family Farm Market at the Tuscarawas County Fairgrounds, four HSUS employees from the Detroit, Mich., area, were petitioning market goers to “sign a petition to stop inhumane slaughterhouse practices.” When challenged by market vendors and officials to fully disclose the language of the petition, one worker yelled, “You are infringing on my First Amendment rights!” and continued to shout at potential signers over vendors’ protests. One woman, who did not wish to be identified, signed the petition, but then, after finding out the details of the proposal from a market vendor, lamented, “Now I wish I hadn’t signed. I didn’t realize what I was really signing. He told me it was just to make slaughterhouses more humane.”
Although asked to leave, HSUS workers refused the request of market and fair board officials, who resorted to seeking the assistance of the Tuscarawas County Sheriff. When one worker noticed The Bargain Hunter taking photos, he made an obscene hand gesture in return, before all four were escorted off the grounds by a deputy.
“They do not have permission from the market to solicit on the grounds,” noted market secretary Jonna Cronebaugh. The group also caused traffic to back up on Tuscarawas Avenue as they stopped cars entering the market and attempted to secure signatures.
“The main thing that bothered me is that they were telling people untruths to get them to sign. They told people this is good for agriculture, and Ohio farmers want this, and told Farm Bureau members that the county Farm Bureau endorsed it and that the county president had signed it. This is all a lie,” said Michelle Specht, of the regional Farm Bureau office. Specht was present at the market when the incident occurred.
Stated Specht emphatically, “farmers and the Farm Bureau do not support the HSUS in any way.”
Watchdog organizations have criticized the HSUS for not using a larger percentage of funds raised to do hands-on dog and cat sheltering that it promotes. In 2007 and 2008, the HSUS provided no money or grants to any Ohio animal shelter.
Published: June 25, 2010
