HSUS Lawyers Strike Out With ‘Other White Meat’ Lawsuit

With the Humane Society of the U.S. giving only 1% of its budget to local pet shelters. Where does the rest of the money go? A significant amount is spent on employing dozens of in-house lawyers, which leads to frivolous litigation. The latest HSUS “fail” is a lawsuit intended to harass the pork industry.

Last year, as a part of its campaign of harassment against pork farmers, HSUS sued the USDA over an action by the National Pork Board, the quasi-governmental pork checkoff program that the agency oversees. Checkoff money is mandatory and goes toward research and general promotion of pork consumption.

If you’ve seen commercials promoting pork as “Pork: The Other White Meat,” that’s what the case was about. In 2006, the National Pork Board purchased the slogan from the National Pork Producers Council, which is a private trade organization for pork farmers, and agreed to pay $60 million over 20 years.

HSUS concocted a theory that the National Pork Board, by paying for the slogan, was illegally sending checkoff money (which was collected for marketing and research purposes) to the Pork Council, which is allowed to lobby — something the Pork Board is not allowed to spend money on.

But HSUS’s lawsuit didn’t get far. A federal judge has dismissed the suit, finding that HSUS did not have standing to file the complaint because it has no stake in how the checkoff spends its money. The judge ruled that the other two plaintiffs, a pork farmer and a left-wing Iowa group, also did not have standing.

Our friends at HumaneWatch.org have produced a video parody: Lawyers in Cages, that drives home the real problems with HSUS and their deceptive fund raising campaigns.

You can view the video on the internet version of this Shortliner newsletter.