Leadership Values

While trolling Animal Rights sites recently I found some interesting thoughts on leadership. It started innocently enough in a conversation about animal care. The site administrator was berating a couple of farmers for the fact that they were exploiting animals. The comment was made that if you were making money from animals, you were exploiting them, and you should be stopped. The farmer in the conversation then asked if those thoughts were the stand of the HSUS. The administrator said they didn’t know, they didn’t work for HSUS, but they were just huge fans.

Over the past several months, this same group of people has been photographed with the president of HSUS. They have received acknowledgement for their efforts in fighting Humanewatch. But they don’t know if the stand they have taken is the same as the official stand of the HSUS?

I’m not sure if I think they believe that statement or not. But that isn’t the question.

Every organization, given enough time, comes to mirror the values of their leader. It works that way, or it should anyway. Find a strong leader and you will most likely find a strong aggressive company. If the company motto goes along these lines,”it’s great to want to soar with the eagles, but at least weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.” you’ll find a company that has questionable abilities and ethics. Company heads surround themselves with people who will help push forward their agenda, and mirror their values.

So when the HSUS tells us that it isn’t in any way against animal agriculture, but it gets repeated over and over again by their supporters, people that the leadership doesn’t distance themselves from, what are we supposed to think? I’m aware of the fact that they’ve done some good things, but when the leadership uses ads that demean all of animal agriculture by association, that doesn’t seem like they are going out of their way to work with the average farmer/rancher.

I know they will tell us that their position is well thought out, scientific, that they are working with ranchers and farmers and are in no way anti ag, I’m going to take that with a grain of salt.