Why is the FBI looking for a couple of sick pigs?

Last summer, FBI agents visited animal sanctuaries in Utah and Colorado, seeking piglets that had been removed from a large-scale hog farm in Milford, Utah, by an animal-rights group called Direct Action Everywhere (DXE). The diseased piglets were rotting to death, says Wayne Hsiung, a founder of DXE, who admits taking them and calls it an act of compassion. Smithfield Farms, the Virginia-based meat producer that owns the farm, says the pigs were stolen, and that DXE violated the firm’s “strict biosecurity policy,” according to The Washington Post.

DXE is working to build an animal-rights movement with the political power to change laws and social norms.

We want to change institutions, especially our political institutions, and the way we think we can do this is by mobilizing a large number of activists,” Hsiung told me.

This approach, too, makes DXE an outlier in the animal-welfare world. Hsiung has doubts about the efficacy of two popular tactics of the movement: welfare reforms and vegan advocacy. He does not believe that campaigns to get laying hens out of cages, led by groups such as the Humane Society of the United States, will bring about an end to meat consumption.

Read the full article by Marc Gunther about animal welfare on Nonprofit Chronicles