By Karen Davis, Ph.D., United Poultry Concerns

UPC promotes a vegan diet. Not only do we not serve animal products at our own events; we do not participate in fundraisers for animals that put animals on food plates!

United Poultry Concerns recently learned that we are represented in James LaVeck’s video, “Silencing the Lambs,” (http://vimeo.com/13613159) as supporting July 2010's fundraiser for Ohioans for Humane Farms at which animals were on the menu. We’ve been asked to clarify whether UPC supported or attended this fundraiser or sent out invitations to it. The answer is NO NO NO.

UPC promotes a vegan diet. Not only do we not serve animal products at our own events; we do not participate in fundraisers for animals that put animals on food plates!

UPC signed on to the Ohioans for Humane Farms ballot measure initially because we support legislation with a potential to reduce the suffering of chickens and other animals who have no hope of escaping their fate except in death. UPC supported California’s Proposition 2 for the same reason, albeit with ambivalence in both cases.

UPC also supports imposing a measure of responsibility on corporations that own animals rather than letting them do whatever they please with total impunity.

However, UPC would NEVER support or have been part of any “humane” event that served slaughtered animals as bait to win favor and money and “friends” to help animals. Had UPC been advised of this fundraiser beforehand, we would have withdrawn from the Ohio coalition, which is no longer a ballot initiative alliance anyway thanks to the Ohio Compromise.

While we are disappointed if not shocked by HSUS’s participation in the Devil’s Dinner for Farm Animals, we are also disappointed in James LaVeck, who never asked UPC about our involvement in it. If he had, we could honestly have said, “What fundraiser?” As one of our members wrote, “He tied the fundraiser right into the list of coalition supporters, making it seem that they all supported this fundraiser.”