Pet supply retail giant PETCO is working in partnership with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the nation’s largest anti-hunting group, to bring the animal rights message to school children across the country. The U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance demands that this relationship be terminated.

The PETCO Foundation, the charitable arm of PETCO Animal Supplies, Inc., is sponsoring the HSUS’s National Association for Humane and Environmental Education (NAHEE) Adopt a Teacher program in 500 elementary schools across the country. The program is part of HSUS’s plan to introduce children, grades kindergarten through six, to the animal rights movement.

The Adopt a Teacher program places the HSUS publication Kids In Nature’s Defense (KIND) News into the hands of teachers and students on a monthly basis during the school year. It provides classrooms with materials that promote the HSUS and its agenda, which is to eliminate animal use including hunting, fishing and trapping.

The HSUS is on record in opposition to all hunting. The animal rights organization calls hunting “fundamentally at odds with the values of a humane, just and caring society,” and has been the principal opponent of hunters and trappers in dozens of campaigns in the 50 state legislatures, in Congress, in the courts and in over a dozen voter issues.

Despite HSUS’s anti-hunting and anti-animal use agenda, PETCO Foundation’s Director Paul Jolly is pleased with PETCO’s partnership with the group. He says the PETCO Foundation is “proud to be able to support the NAHEE’s KIND News campaign.”

Sportsmen have seen similar situations before. A company, with which millions of sportsmen and sportswomen do business, agrees to partner with HSUS without considering the complete agenda of the organization. The fact that PETCO is bringing HSUS directly to America’s children makes the situation a true crisis.

“Businesses tend to be uneducated about the real intentions of groups like the Humane Society of the United States,” said U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance President Walter P. Pidgeon. “The U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance calls on sportsmen to speak in defense of their hunting, fishing and trapping heritage. Let PETCO know that it is unacceptable for a business to help bring the anti-hunting sentiment of the animal rights movement into America’s classrooms.”