Humane Society Of The United States: Under Investigation
This is not your grandmother’s “Humane Society”.
Those of us closely involved in dog sport have been long aware that the Humane Society of the United States is nothing more than an activist animal rights movement that has “appropriated” the identity of a long established and respected animal welfare organization. It is endlessly frustrating to hear their representatives quoted by media as though they were – often the same media that is finally alert and skeptical towards PETA.
According to Activistcash.com ” HSUS has accumulated $113 million in assets and built a recognizable brand by capitalizing on the confusion its very name provokes. This misdirection results in an irony of which most animal lovers are unaware: HSUS raises enough money to finance animal shelters in every single state, with money to spare, yet it doesn’t operate a single one anywhere.”
Like many groups of this kind, they have a habit of exploiting natural disasters to excite the donation stream. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were no exception. Complaints from animal rescuers on the ground have been gathering for months, and now the Louisiana Attorney General has opened an investigation.
Attorney General Charles Foti Opens Inquiry into Humane Society of the United States
March 27, 2006: (Baton Rouge, LA)-Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr., announced today that his office has opened an inquiry into allegations involving funds raised for pet /owner reunions by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). The Attorney General’s Office is asking the HSUS for an accounting of all funds HSUS raised for the purpose of pet rescue and reunion with pet owners in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
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The Attorney General is asking anyone with information about questionable fundraising activities by animal groups or any other groups to please contact the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Section at 1-800-351-4889 or visit our website at www.ag.state.la.us.
If you want to support animal welfare causes, your safest bet is to donate to your local shelter.
I think a little bit of clarification is needed here so that folks don’t confuse local Humane Societies with the national organization. Do NOT tar all Humane Societies with the same brush as the national organization. My local Humane Society runs the local shelter, but looking at its funding I find no money from the national organization, though they are affiliated. They also took in animals from Katrina, despite being about as far as you can get from the impacted area.
My local society managed to get the obvious URL http://www.thehumanesociety.org/
They recently had to put down 29 pit bulls that were bred for fighting. It is sad that folks do such things.
I don’t know about anywhere else, but here in Georgia any bunch of animal lovers can get together and call themselves a “humane society.” Furthermore, HSUS isn’t the organization most uninformed people think of when they think of a national Humane Society organization — like local groups I know of here in georgia, they simply appropriated the phrase “humane society” for use in their name.