Mistakes Are Correctable... Yellow Tail

By Mike Deering, director of communications

I know we all have made several mistakes. However, mistakes are nothing more than lessons that lead to bigger and better things. These screw ups allow us to expand our intellectual capacity a bit. Yellow Tail wine, owned by Casella Wines, recently donated $100,000 to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) for their "Tails for Tails" initiative. This deceptively named organization threatens the fabric of the entire agricultural industry, U.S. economy and global food security.

As our friends at the Center for Consumer Freedom aggressively point out on a regular basis, HSUS is NOT - I repeat IS NOT - an animal shelter group taking care of abandoned pets. I do, however, understand how one would assume its association with fuzzy puppy shelters (just look at their puppy covered Web site). HSUS fully intends to pull one over on us. They ask for donations to help pets but HSUS only reported to the Internal Revenue Service that $450,000 of their $89,000,000 million budget went to that worthy cause. The rest went to fundraising, lobbying and salaries. For example, Wayne Pacelle, the well-spoken and manipulative CEO of this so-called animal well being organization, pulled in a whopping $250,000.

This group and its supporters have often times gathered millions of dollars to offer assistance to worthy causes, but have a history of manipulation. From helping animal victims in Haiti to those that suffered from Hurricane Katrina, HSUS capitalizes on horrific events to gather funds for their deceptive attempts to ruin agriculture - the single most important industry to the survival of mankind.

Back to my point that we all make mistakes. I truly believe Casella Wines had no clue it was donating to an animal rights extremist group trying to destroy food security. I think they just screwed up and didn't do their homework. Why do I believe this? Casella Wines is an example of a small business that took hard work and dedication to the max. The company started in the late 1950s as a small family business. Six generations later, the company is huge and still family owned. Why in the world would a family operation that dreams the dream and is willing to pay the price to make their goals a reality work against farm families who are trying to feed a growing global population? That makes zero sense.

Casella Wines - Yellow Tail - has the opportunity to look back and say "oops." Fix it. Cancel the check. Move on to other things. Write a check to the National FFA Organization and/or National 4-H. I assure you that your wine sales will skyrocket from this agricultural communications guru. Another good blog post is one from Corn Commentary.