Credibility of the source makes or breaks a message.
Which is why it is impossible to understand why the public hasn't yet decided that the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is a joke when it comes to giving factual information.
The latest example concerns dairy farms in California.
In case you haven't heard, HSUS and five activist groups filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on January 28 against the Environmental Protection Agency "for failing to address pollution from factory farms" under the Clean Air Act.
Its press release announcing the suit includes a statement by Tom Frantz, identified as a farmer and the president of one of the plaintiffs, the Association of Irritated Residents, in Shafter, Calif. He said, "In California's San Joaquin Valley, we have suffered a huge increase in factory farm dairies over the past decade."
Which is factually wrong, and here is real data to prove it:
According to the San Joaquin Valley Air Control District, the San Joaquin Valley consists of eight counties – Fresno, Kings, Kern, Madera, Merced, San Luis Obispo, Stanislaus, and Tulare.
According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture's Dairy Marketing Branch, the total number of licensed dairies in those eight counties during the last decade has decreased by more than 22 percent:
Once again the message is: don't expect accurate facts from HSUS.
February 16, 2015
