This was the week when one ag giant took on the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) and won in the court of public opinioni, while yet another food industry retailer folded to HSUS demands like a pup tent.

This tale of dueling titans began earlier this week when Safeway, the country’s second largest supermarket chain, joined McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s and the Compass Group (British-owned) in capitulating to HSUS and telling the world it would source pork from farms phasing out gestation stalls. This strikes me as the classic “win/win” of public relations illogic: If we’re part of a gang, no one can criticize us for being the only bad guy when it comes to farmers and ranchers; if we’re part of a gang, then it shows collective thinking on the issue. I say it shows Safeway has no independent thought process.

The surrender by Safeway was followed by a rather desperate move by HSUS in holding a tripartite press conference in DC, Little Rock and Denver to unveil its latest undercover video showing cruelty at a Wyoming hog farm – a farm owned by a Japanese company – it claims is a supplier to Tyson Foods.

However, while the actions shown on the video are inexcusable and all in industry should be outraged, HSUS’ media presence Wayne Pacelle continually tried to draw a straight line between the use of gestation stalls, the portrayed cruelty and Tyson sourcing pigs from farms which use gestation stalls.

Tyson responded in a measured fashion: “Contrary to the impression left by HSUS, there is no connection between this Wyoming farm and the pork that we process.” The company went on to explain it has a small subsidiary company which sources old sows from several locations and resells them; this Wyoming farm is among the farms from which it has purchased sows over time. None of the sows bought by the Tyson subsidiary goes into the Tyson pork line. Tyson has severed any relationship with the farm.

Pacelle obviously giddy over the Safeway announcement, tried to keep the anti-stall momentum going and continued to indict Tyson for seemingly even knowing the Wyoming farm existed. The HSUS groupthink is that if it can knock off the biggest or a couple of the biggest, the rest of the industry will fall in line like sheep. Apparently in this case, they’re correct as far as Safeway and the fast food crowd go, but dead wrong about Tyson. Tyson has been a target of HSUS since 2005, and a company which has continually had the backbone to tell HSUS to go pound salt, that it places science, animal health and wellbeing ahead of placating activist political agendas, sources from farms which use both stalls and open systems, insists that any farm from which it buys be certified under the Pork Producers Quality Assurance Plus (PQA+) program, and it conducts audits of its suppliers.

So while Tyson is my hero of the week, big kudos are also due the National Pork Producers Council, which when informed of the Safeway decision/announcement, refused to be a part of the silent gang afraid to offend the guys with the checkbooks.

NPPC President R.C. Hunt said the following: “With regards to Safeway’s decision to give preference to pork suppliers who phase out individual stall housing, the NPPC is concerned that similar actions taken by governments – or other restaurant or grocery chains – have increased production costs and consumer prices. These actions have forced some hog farmers out of business or caused them to reduce operations with no demonstrable benefits to the sows…it seems Safeway was intimidated by an animal rights group whose ultimate goal is the elimination of food animal production.”

So much for corporate social responsibility.