Paul Shapiro

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Paul Shapiro is the Humane Society of the United States' senior director of the factory farming campaign.

As of 2008, one of the campaign's primary efforts involves promoting the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act. If passed by California voters on November 4, 2008, this initiative will phase out the confinement of laying hens in battery cages, breeding pigs in gestation crates, and calves in veal crates.

Shapiro also directs an effort to convince retailers, food service providers, and universities to end their use of eggs from caged birds. Additionally, the HSUS factory farming campaign played a significant role in helping pass Proposition 204, a successful 2006 Arizona ballot initiative that phases out gestation crates and veal crates. The campaign has also helped pass laws against gestation crates in Oregon and both gestation and veal crates in Colorado.

Prior to working at the Humane Society of the United States, in 1995 Shapiro founded the animal advocacy organization Compassion Over Killing and served as its campaigns director until 2005. The organization became well-known for its investigative work exposing conditions for farm animals on factory farms, at livestock auctions, and at slaughter plants. He was profiled in a 2003 Washington Post Style section article entitled "Animal Pragmatism."

Shapiro helped spearhead the campaign to end the use of the "Animal Care Certified" logo on egg cartons in the United States. In that case, the egg industry was labeling eggs from hens confined in battery cages as "Animal Care Certified." After Better Business Bureau rulings, federal petitions, investigations at "Animal Care Certified" egg facilities leading to media exposés, and other efforts, in September 2005, the Federal Trade Commission announced that the logo would be removed from egg cartons nationwide.

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