We’re seeking to create a humane society, and there’s no way to do that without thinking more broadly about community, and the animals are part of our community.

Welcome gracious viewers to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Today we are proud to present the first in a two-part program on Mr. Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive officer of the Humane Society of the United States and author of the best-selling book “The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them.”

With a mission of “celebrating animals and confronting cruelty,” the Humane Society strives to build a compassionate world where all animals are our cherished co-inhabitants, free to live without fear of abuse, exploitation or neglect.

As leader of the largest organization in the United States dedicated to animal protection, Mr. Pacelle, a vegan, works to constructively shape animal-human relations. He has secured lasting victories for our animal friends in federal and state legislatures as well as courtrooms and boardrooms across the nation. An animal lover from childhood and passionate advocate for animal rights throughout his career, Mr. Pacelle tells us about his early involvement in animal welfare causes and his decision to become vegan.

I had a kinship with animals from a very young age. I mean my mother would tell you when I was three or four, I was very focused on animals. And I believe that we have a bond with other creatures, I actually just wrote a book called “The Bond,” and it explores and explains why we’re so connected to animals, and why a three or four year-old with really no inculcation and no direction in terms of kind of an active compassion for animals, felt this fellow feeling for other creatures.

And as that, feeling just really got imbedded in me, as I got older, I began to make some connections, and it just continued to grow, and become more powerful. And when I was a college student, I started an animal protection organization to work against factory farming, and other abuses of animals, that’s when I became vegan, when I was 19 years of age. And I felt that this was really my life’s calling, was to speak up for these creatures who can’t speak for themselves.

A long-standing champion of the voiceless, Mr. Pacelle believes humans have a duty of care and responsibility towards all the animals with whom we share our Earth.

In the relationship we have with other creatures, we have all the power, and we should use our power not just to advance our own economic gain or selfish interest, but to be good to other animals and to be altruistic and other-centered. And I’ve often felt that how we treat animals is a basic test of our character, because they are so vulnerable, and they are so weak, compared to how strong we are, that it really is a reflection of the decency and restraint that we’re capable of.

The Humane Society has successfully campaigned for the passage of hundreds of new state and federal laws that safeguard animal lives. As the group’s president, Wayne Pacelle has testified before the US Congress on the urgent need for greater recognition of animal rights and animal industry reforms.

Well, I do believe that if we’re going to be active on animal protection issues, we need to take steps in our personal lives to kind of wring the cruelty out of our lives, and the daily behaviors that we engage in, whether it’s food or clothing or buying products tested on animals, and opting for the alternatives. But we also need to look at this on a macro level, and we need to prevent cruelty from happening in the first place.

So we need to strengthen policies to protect animals, and inevitably that leads us to the local, state, federal and even international bodies that can address these issues of how animals are treated, and to have certain standards that exist.

So I’m very focused on getting new laws passed to protect animals, and I have been fortunate enough to work in Congress to help pass a couple of dozen laws, and more than a thousand laws at the state level, including about 30 ballot initiatives where the citizens are organized to adopt policies to say stop factory farming or outlaw cockfighting, or stop bear baiting, or other inhumane practices.

So, I want to appeal directly to the people in power. So testifying before Senate committees or US House committees has been a way to transmit our message, and really make a compelling case that animals matter, and that we have responsibilities to be decent to them. If we have anti-cruelty statutes that are already accepted in America and in countries throughout the world, then that standard needs to be logically applied, and it needs to be applied even to settings where the conduct that we exhibit toward animals is legal, but it's very harmful to the animals like factory farming.

Under Mr. Pacelle’s leadership, the Humane Society is working throughout the United States to stop the mistreatment of animals. The organization has also extended its operations across the globe to address animal welfare issues.

We have a network of organizations now that operate under one umbrella. And one of our organizations is Humane Society International, because we’ve realized that animal cruelty doesn't stop at a nation’s boundaries, and in the era of globalization, and in an era of so much worldwide travel and the Internet, these industries that are causing harm to animals are operating on that global scale, and we need to be able to meet them and challenge what they’re doing, and show a different and a better way of interacting with animals, and to move away from this model of exploitation and harm, and move toward compassion and mercy and goodness toward all animals.

Since Mr. Pacelle’s appointment as president in 2004, the Humane Society has introduced bold new initiatives and accomplished much in the realm of bettering the well-being of wildlife and companion animals including freeing many imprisoned in research facilities.

Notable accomplishments include the group playing an instrumental role in banning “Internet hunting” in nearly all states in the US. Internet hunting involves remotely shooting animals with a real gun by using a computer and webcams. Also the Humane Society assisted in the successful evacuation of thousands of animals following Hurricane Katrina which devastated the southeastern US in 2005.

In part due to the efforts of the organization, the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards (PETS) Act become federal law in 2006 and requires local and state agencies to plan for the rescue, care and shelter of companion animals following disasters. Mr. Pacelle has been lauded for his achievements in crafting, qualifying, and passing animal-related state ballot initiatives.

Thanks to his leadership, voters in the state of Missouri enacted a law in 2010 addressing cruelty in puppy mills and California voters passed “Proposition 2” in 2008 which ended the intensive confinement of 20 million farm animals in the state. What lies ahead for the Humane Society of the United States? Mr. Pacelle shared with us some of the group’s upcoming projects and long-term objectives.

Science is also going to allow us to innovate and really leave behind methods that we thought were indispensable or central at one point, and now just look like acts of cruelty with new technologies ahead. So, I think that we’ve got to address the massive killing and inhumane treatment of animals in agriculture. Ten billion animals a year killed in the United States, 65 billion worldwide.

The billions of sea creatures who are also victims, not just the fish who are used for food, but the so-called bycatch, the collateral damage from all of these industrial fishing practices like sea turtles being killed or sea birds like Albatrosses. So we’re going to address that, we’re going to crack down on puppy mills, we want to eliminate animal fighting, dogfighting and cockfighting worldwide.

We want to stop the trade in wildlife parts and products, like elephant ivory, and rhino horn and the skins of many species throughout the world, many of whom are in danger. So it’s a very broad agenda. We are concerned about all animals, and our mission statement is celebrating animals, and confronting cruelty.

So those are our twin focuses, we want to celebrate the positive expression of the human-animal bond, and we want to recognize the attributes, the cognitive qualities of these animals. At the same time, when people use their power in a way that’s harmful to animals, we want to try to stop that. We want to show them the better way. So confronting cruelty is central to our mission.

We end our show today with a note of optimism from Wayne Pacelle regarding the future of animal-human relations.

I think that more and more people are recognizing their own responsibilities to other creatures, that these other creatures are conscious, aware, thinking, feeling beings, and they have the same spark of life that we have, they have the same will to live that we have, they have the same wish to avoid pain and suffering that we do. And once we are alert to their needs and to their wants, then I think decent people are going to act in a better way.

And a lot of people can characterize it in different ways. They can say that the animals have rights, or they can talk about how this framework works for them. But ultimately this is really more about us than it is about them. It’s about our being responsible and exhibiting a lighter step on the planet.

Thank you Mr. Pacelle for all that you and the Humane Society of the United States volunteers do for animals in the US as well as around the globe. We share your view that animals and humans have a shining future together, filled with peace and harmony.

For more details on the Humane Society of the United States, please visit Mr. Pacelle’s book “The Bond” is available at

Wonderful viewers, please join us tomorrow on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants for the conclusion of our two-part program when we will speak with Wayne Pacelle about his bestselling new book “The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them.” We will also have highlights from the 2011 Genesis Awards, a Humane Society sponsored event that recognizes major news and entertainment media for producing outstanding works that raise public awareness of animal issues.

Thank you for your company today on our program. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment, after Noteworthy News. May Heaven grace us all with beauty, wisdom, strength and kindness.