 I'd like to call, uh, get Fred Stokes up here and, uh, Wayne Pacell, and, um, that was a great panel. I thank you guys, and, and that sort of tees up this next presentation very well. This is not a panel. It's actually just going to be a very, uh, a short talk, uh, by Wayne Pacell, who is the, uh, president of the Humane Society of the United States, and, and it's a special honor for me to be able to introduce the man who's going to introduce Wayne, and that is Fred Stokes, uh, who is the head of the Organization of Competitive Markets, or was for a long time, and, uh, uh, Fred is a, uh, one of the guys who has kept this fight going, uh, when no one else was there. So, uh, here's Fred Stokes. Thank you, Barry. About three years ago, uh, a friend, uh, of the Organization of Competitive Markets, Joe Maxwell, uh, brought some folks from HSUS, the Humane Society of the United States, to some of our meetings, to talk with us about a possible collaboration on some efforts that we had going. Joe is, is sort of the bridge between farmers and ranchers, real farmers and ranchers, independent family farmers and ranchers, and the Humane Society who's now embarked on a relationship with the, um, this relationship has, has grown, um, we're not married, but we, we have a very good working relationship with mutual respect and trust, and, uh, I think it's going to be productive. Uh, one of the projects we're working on is redressing what we see as the horrible abuses of the so-called, uh, beef check off program more commonly referred to today as the beef tax, which people like myself think is a situation where we are forced to fund our own demise, and, and we're going to try to do something about that. And, uh, OCM is small and has limited capability and resources, and, uh, HSUS has joined with us and, and going forward with this effort in the belief that, uh, family farmers and ranchers do a better job of treating farm animals humanely, and, and that certainly tracks with my experience. So, uh, we, we have rallied around the things that we believe in common and we have parked any possible, uh, differing views on other things. We're just not concerned about them now, and we're focusing on the thing we agree to. And, uh, Wayne Percelli, uh, is someone that we have met and worked with and come to know, uh, I have found him to be a straight shooter, someone that's accessible, and he has given his assurance that they will support us in our effort as, as we go forward. And so it's, it's a great honor for me to introduce to you, Wayne Percelli, the head of the Humane Society. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. My, uh, college roommate was from Mississippi, so I always like to be introduced by someone from Mississippi. So Fred, thank you very, very much. And I'm awfully glad to be here and really enjoyed that last panel. And I was particularly proud, uh, to see, uh, two of our HSUS agricultural council members, Sheila Nichols and Mike Calacrate on that. So thank you very, very much for your involvement with HSUS. I want to give you a little perspective of who we are and maybe talk about why we're so keenly interested in this area of, of activity. HSUS is the nation's largest animal welfare organization. It's been around for 60 years. Our logo consists of 19 different animals in the shape of the United States, which is meant to convey that we're advocates for all animals and we do it on a national scale and actually now a global scale because, uh, in our era of globalization, all of the issues that we work on here, uh, are now, uh, around the globe and we must address those problems on that, on that stage. And people have said, well, you know, the, you may say, I mean, aren't you really about dogs and cats? And I say, well, dogs and cats are part of our birthright, but our birthright has always been about protecting all animals. And when you look at the animals in our world, they're everywhere. We have 171 million dogs and cats in our homes. Two thirds of American households have pets. We spend more than 50 billion dollars a year on them. If you add in the hamsters and the rabbits and the birds, uh, we have 350 million pets in our homes. They're more pets than people in American households. Millions of us, tens of millions of us are wildlife watchers. We go out into the fields and forests and see the incredible feats of flight of birds and other creatures. Just one category of federal lands, uh, the national park service and the national parks and other units of the NPS hosts more than 300 million visits a year. If you look at even urban environments like New York city, right in the middle of New York city is central park. So as we have our, our greatest human development in terms of human architecture and human settlement, even in the midst of that, we still want a place where there's nature. If you look at all the different animals in the wild, in our homes, the greatest number of animals, of course, are those animals used in agriculture. And agriculture is a fundamental human enterprise. And it's been a fundamental human enterprise for, uh, 10,000 years. I mean, really you can trace back to the domestication of plants and animals as one of the great junctures in human history. And so much flowed from that, moving from a hunting and gathering strategy for survival, uh, to a cultivation and, uh, animal rearing, uh, strategy. And you can trace from there, uh, the rise of community, uh, eventually to cities and nations and to civilization. And of course, I think this gathering here today is, is built around this question of what agriculture should look like. And of course, when we're talking specifically about animal agriculture, what's at the center of animal agriculture? Well, animals are at the center of animal agriculture. And this whole notion that we shouldn't be concerned at the Humane Society about animals in agriculture, uh, or that society shouldn't be so concerned about this, uh, seems so wrong-headed. It seems ahistorical, and it also, uh, seems to deny the fact that so many animals are involved in production systems. So I hope that every person who's involved in animal agriculture remembers that animals are at the center of the operation. And when we forget about that, we forget about one of our central responsibilities. You know, there's a lot of terminology about groups that work in the sphere that I work in protecting animals. Some people use the term animal rights, some animal protection, some animal welfare. A lot of people use them interchangeably. For a long time, we've called ourselves an animal protection organization, but I often use the words animal welfare as well. But really what we're about is more about human responsibility than we are about animal rights. It's really more about us and how we conduct ourselves in this world. I mean, you have to understand the basics that animals think and they feel that they have their own needs and wants. But it's really we who have this immense power over other creatures and how we handle that power says a lot about us as individuals and all of us as a society. So that's really the precept in terms of the Humane Society's outlook on these issues. I'll also mention this notion of pluralism. You know, America is a country where we value pluralism. We don't have a single ideology. We don't have a single political party. We accept this notion of different beliefs and different behaviors. Of course, we have basic standards and we have fundamental tenets in our society. Free speech is a tenant. We've got a lot of other core values of our society. It's not just a free for all. You do anything you want or a country with traditions and values. And one of those values is opposition to animal cruelty. If you look at every single state, most of them dating back to the 19th century, every state has a statute forbidding malicious cruelty to animals. I would doubt, you know, there's anyone really who's making the argument in this day and age that animals don't matter at all. It wasn't that long ago that some people did make that argument, but I think our idea that animals deserve respectful treatment has triumphed and it's embedded in the law. And our values are reflected in our laws. Laws are designed to keep order, but they're also designed to tell us who we are as a people. So this notion of pluralism is so important to us. And for those who say that HSUS is against all animal agriculture or has a certain set of orthodox or doctrinaire beliefs. Yes, we believe in things very strongly, opposition animal cruelty. But within that framework, we want to invite people in. So as I said at the start, I am as proud of Sheila and Mike as members of the Humane Society of the United States as I am of anyone. We are excited about the farmers who are members of the Humane Society of the United States. We are elevating farmers into leadership roles within our organization, whether it's Joe Maxwell, who's a vice president of the organization, or Kevin Fulton, who's the chair of our Ag Council in Nebraska, or Mike in Colorado, or Sheila in Missouri. These people are important to our organization. We're an organization that represents millions of people. And the vast majority of them consume animal products. The vast majority, upwards of 90 percent of them consume animal products. And our metric at the Humane Society is not are you perfect? Are you living an absolutely, you know, animal free lifestyle? No, that's not our metric. Our metric is forward progress. Are you being conscious? Are you aware of your responsibilities to other creatures? Are you acting with that awareness and trying to do better? And I think that's what every responsible farmer would say is a duty of him or her is to constantly do better, especially as we understand animals better than ever in terms of their cognition and their behavior. So I want to I want to mention four goals that we've got less cruelty. More husbandry, fewer animals, more farmers, which is break those down just a little bit. Less cruelty, you can certainly understand as part of the mission of the Humane Society of the United States. We don't want to see people abuse animals in any sector of the economy or in any setting, whether it's a home or a field anywhere, we want to reduce the amount of cruelty in the world because we want people to act responsibly, that issue of human responsibility. And when it comes to agriculture, we are deeply distressed by the industrialization of agriculture where animals have been moved from pasture settings, outdoor settings where they could feel soil beneath their feet, where they could feel sunlight on their backs and to move into buildings. And then within those buildings in certain sectors, like the egg, like the egg industry or the pork industry, that they're confined in cages and crates, barely larger than their bodies. Now, I don't care whether you're an inveterate carnivore or a very resolute vegan, wherever you are on that spectrum, denying animals built to move, animals with legs and wings, the opportunity to take a couple of steps or extend their wings, to deny that is wrong. You know, Joe Maxwell talks a lot about the fact that he's not a pork producer, he's a pig farmer. You know, these animals have lives that matter to them. And Kevin Fulton, our Nebraska Ag Council chair, said it best. I mean, his goal, his goal is to make sure that the animals on his farm have just one bad day. And not every day is a day of privation for these animals, living in this confinement setting, breathing ammonia, immobilized, denied human care, typically denied veterinary care. I mean, the scale of it is impossible in terms of animal husbandry and animal care. So that's the second principle, more husbandry. We want to value farmers who are actually farming, intending to the animals. I went to an industrial egg operation in North Central Iowa. There were 10 million birds at that farm. There were six or eight birds in each cage. There were 150,000 birds in each building, and there were 83 buildings. There were just a couple of workers who popped into each building every once in a while. That is not farming. That is mass production of animals. We want more husbandry. We want more people who show skill in farming and more care. Third is fewer animals. We can't responsibly raise nine billion animals in this country for food. And this race to the bottom in terms of cutting out our core values of animal care, environmental responsibility, proper animal husbandry and custodial chip, the inputs that we make into the antibiotics and the other substances that we give to these animals. It can't be done at this level. And if we eat a little bit less meat and value it more and value the farmer's inputs as an artisanal sort of trade or a real trade or craft, the farmers are going to see more of the money and people are going to appreciate it more. There's going to be more of a connection between the consumer and the farmer. And finally, is this notion of more farmers? You know, the Humane Society has really only started to make gains in stopping extreme confinement of animals in the last decade. And just recently stopping tail docking of dairy cows in a few states. For decades, we've seen the loss in rural communities because of this industrialization of agriculture. Ninety one percent of pork producers, eighty eight percent of dairy farmers. Forty two percent of cattle farmers. I mean, is this a success story? Are we the problem in agriculture when you see those losses before HSUS exerted any meaningful impact on the production systems? The only rational answer is no, we're not responsible. But now what we're trying to do is connect people to their food to make responsible choices, to make conscious choices. And what's holding us back in so many ways are trade associations that are so ideological and so doctrinaire that they don't want to see gains in animal welfare in any sector. The folks at the Animal Agriculture Alliance and the National Pork Producers Council, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, they they work to thwart an agreement by the egg industry that wants to progress, that recognizes that this inhumane confinement of laying hands and battery cages is not acceptable. It's not morally acceptable. It's not acceptable in terms of food safety. And they want to figure out a transition to a better production system. And they were unified. Just a handful of egg farmers were opposed to it. The major egg farmers in the country were for it. But who's against it? Those groups that I mentioned. Two of which, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the National Pork Producers Council benefit immensely from a check off program that conscripts farmers into funding those operations. These check off programs are driving the political and lobbying activities of organizations who are stuck in the mud morally on animal welfare, thwarting an agreement to improve the lives of laying hands that the egg industry wants. The pork industry vetoes that. Yet they're getting millions of dollars from a check off program. I mean, the Pork Producers Council check off program itself is an incredible scam. You are all familiar with pork, the other white meat that was a program of the National Pork Board. Well, that program ran its course developed with check off dollars. Check off dollars paid for the advertising component, paid for the development of the concept. And then just about as the program is going to be retired. The National Pork Producers Council buys or actually has sold to it pork, the other white meat for $3 million a year for 20 years. So something that was developed with the check off program and the money that came from those pig producers somehow gets gets sold to the National Pork Producers Council $60 million over 20 years. I mean, it's an unbelievable scam. So we are, as Fred said, looking at these check off programs as a matter of fairness, but also as a matter of the misuse of these funds. So we're excited to be here and I want to remind you of those four notions that HSUS is behind. Less cruelty, more husbandry, fewer animals, more farmers to care for them. Thanks very much for having me. Appreciate it.