Response Magazine - December 2010

fondly of a Missouri ballot measure cracking down on puppy mills that passed just a month ago, as well as the 2008 passage of California Prop. 2, halting the intensive confinement of 20 million farm animals.

Throughout a phone conversation with Pacelle from his Washington, D.C., office about the HSUS’ marketing methods, his passion for animals and for fighting for their protection and betterment of their circumstances shines through time and again. Next April 12, Pacelle will share that passion in a new book, published by Harper Collins, “The Bond: Our Kinship With Animals and Our Call to Defend Them.”

A Life Devoted

The HSUS has worked since its
founding in 1954 to create a world in
which “people satisfy the physical and
emotional needs of domestic animals;
protect wild animals and their environ-
ments; and change their relationships
with all animals, evolving from exploita-
tion and harm to respect and compas-
sion.”
That mission appealed immediately
to a young Pacelle, who grew up in New
Haven, Conn., the son of a father who
was a teacher and football coach and a
mother who was a secretary. “We weren’t
wealthy by any means, but it was a loving
family and a great upbringing,” Pacelle
says of his parents, brother and two sis-
ters. He attended local public schools
until entering an all-boys parochial high
school.

“I played tennis there and at Yale,”
Pacelle says. “But it’s also where I dove
headfirst into the animal movement by
starting an animal protection group.”
Following that experience, Pacelle
took a college internship with an animal
welfare group that really set him on his
career path. “I was planning on going to

The HSUS’ investigative units captured compelling video f factory farming operations that it used in DRTV advertising to campaign for more humane laws in California and other states.

law school, but the internship eventually led to a position as an associate editor for Animals’ Agenda magazine when I graduated. Apparently, though, I still like lawyers — as we have about 50 of them on staff at HSUS,” he says with a chuckle.

After working in that role for a year
— “writing features, book reviews, news;
it was a great primer on all subjects in
the animal world” — he was contacted
by Cleveland Amory, the founder of The
Fund for Animals, a national organiza-
tion created in the 1960s. Pacelle says,
“Cleveland was a best-selling author in
the field, a social historian, a hero in the
animal rights world. His executive vice
president had retired, and he told me he’d
been following my writing and my work.
He hired me as executive director of his
organization at age 23. It was a very flat-
tering experience.”
He worked at The Fund for Animals
for five-and-a-half years, beginning his
experience in lobbying for new laws
during his time. “The HSUS began re-
cruiting me, and I finally took its post as
chief lobbyist and spokesperson in 1994,”
Pacelle says. “I thought then — and I’ve
worked hard to prove those thoughts
correct — that the HSUS had enor-
mous potential to
reach mainstream
America.”
of bait and dogs to hunt bears, cougars
and bobcats in Colorado, Massachusetts,
Oregon and Washington; bans on the
use of cruel traps in California (1998),
Colorado (1996), Massachusetts (1996)
and Washington (2000); and outlawing
cockfighting in Arizona (1998), Missouri
(1998) and Oklahoma (2002).

During his 10 years in that role, Pacelle worked to pass such key ballot measures as: Florida’s ban of the use of gestation crates for housing breeding sows (2002); mid-1990s bans on the use

A Busy Presidency

Since taking the leadership role, Pacelle has spurred unimagined growth for what is now the nation’s largest animal protection organization — 11 million members and constituents, $130 million in annual revenue and assets of $200 million.