Missouri Farmers Care is calling for an end to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) coordination with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) in planning an animal welfare scientific forum.

 "There is no sensible reason for the federal Department of Agriculture to coordinate with an expressly anti-agriculture organization like HSUS," Missouri Farmers Care Chairman and Executive Vice President of the Missouri Pork Association Don Nikodim says. "To use taxpayer dollars to give HSUS a public forum for their radical animal-rights agenda under the guise of a scientific forum undermines the very farmers that the USDA is supposed to be helping."

Missouri Farmers Care is supporting recent statements made on the Senate floor by Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) calling attention to the USDA's Animal Plant Health and Inspection Service's (APHIS) coordination with HSUS.  Sen. Moran said "...it becomes clear that the Department of Agriculture is catering to an outside organization instead of relying upon the advice of animal scientists at our land grant universities or even within the Department of Agriculture. If the Department of Agriculture was interested in science, why would it allow an animal rights organization to steer its agenda?"

"We support Sen. Moran's views on the USDA and APHIS coordinating with HSUS at the expense of agriculture and animal scientists and ask that Congress look into this relationship," Nikodim says. "Animal welfare should be based on real science, not the extreme animal-rights agenda of one special-interest organization like HSUS."

Additional information regarding Missouri Farmers Care and Missouri agriculture can be found at www.MoFarmersCare.com.