Humane Society Strikes at Pembient Again
On February 20th, I received a curious email. It was from a detective with the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW). He was looking to establish a point-of-contact for law enforcement at Pembient. Being CEO, I assumed the responsibility and agreed to a call on the 28th to discuss Pembient's work.
Approximately two hours before the call, I received a new message. Agents from the DFW now wanted to meet in person! Since I didn't have a conference room booked at my office, I quickly arranged to meet them at a local cafe. Did Pembient, I wondered, break the law in its quest to biofabricate, or grow, animal horn? Visions of perp walks danced in my head as I wrote down my lawyer's phone number, left everything else behind, and headed out to the meeting.
But what precipitated these events? I had a hunch that special interests were involved. Back in 2016, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) successfully lobbied the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to deny a permit sought by the Black Rhino Genome Project, a non-commercial effort to map out a black rhinoceros' genetic code. One of the reasons HSUS cited for why the FWS should deny the permit was Pembient's advocacy of the project. HSUS wanted to stop the map from being made so that Pembient couldn't use any knowledge gleaned from it to biofabricate the horn of an endangered species.
Unfortunately, my hunch that outsiders were meddling again was correct. According to a response to a public records request, HSUS and its sister organizations, Humane Society International and Humane Society Legislative Fund, contacted the DFW about Pembient sometime after February 12th. They urged the DFW to take "immediate enforcement action" against Pembient for violations of the Washington Animal Trafficking Act. More specifically, they claimed that Pembient's PembiCoin offering, a crowdsale in which individuals could purchase cryptographic tokens exchangeable for biofabricated horn in the year 2022, was illegal.
A close look at the letter HSUS sent to the DFW reveals an astounding jump to an erroneous conclusion. That is, PembiCoin is repeatedly mischaracterized as an offer for sale of "synthetic rhinoceros horn." However, the PembiCoin offering refers exclusively to "biofabricated horn." As such, PembiCoin should be viewed as an offer for sale of horn made from the most exotic stem cell line legally allowed at the time of production. Pembient might prefer to use rhinoceros stem cells, but if that turns out to be infeasible, it could revert to using cow stem cells. The resulting Cowino™ horn, a portmanteau of "cow horn" and "rhino horn," would be a cylinder of horn with the presently unparalleled solidity and heft of rhinoceros horn, but entirely legal. Unless, of course, HSUS proposes we start regulating beef and other cow parts as wildlife products.
Besides demonstrating a complete misunderstanding of PembiCoin, the letter also brings up two old issues that I've addressed again and again and again in detail. The first is that biofabricated horn will "attract new customers, who would not have otherwise purchased rhinoceros horns, to the market." Moreover, "at least some of these new users will eventually shift their consumption to wild horns since the more expensive wild horns will confer the luxury status that the synthetic horns will not." The second is that "enforcement will be difficult because officials will not have an efficient, practical means of distinguishing between real and synthetic horns." These statements, taken together, are contradictory. If expensive horns are less likely to be fake than cheap horns, law enforcement should concentrate on finding and prosecuting those selling expensive horns. Else, if expensive horns are as equally likely to be fake as cheap horns, buyers are better off purchasing cheap horns, thereby putting downward pressure on all prices. Past a certain price level, it becomes too costly to source any horns from the wild, and the entire market will consist of biofabricated horns.
So, was I arrested? Thankfully, no, I wasn't. The meeting with the DFW agents went well. They asked insightful questions, and I gained a better understanding of their concerns. Further, I renewed my commitment to making sure Pembient operates in the open so it can stay on the right side of the law.
As far as
HSUS is concerned, it can make no such assertion. It continues to
operate in secrecy, attempting to co-opt law enforcement to further its
agenda. One would hope that the organization would be dealing with more
pressing issues, including its appalling tolerance of sexual harassment.
I wonder what HSUS's donors think. Do they realize that their
hard-earned cash is going to a glorified law firm and not to help
animals? Does obstructing science and innovation during a time of
rampant wildlife poaching sound wise to them? What would they do if they
found out that an economist recommends that non-profits should subsidize biofabrication instead of attempting to ban it? I don't know the answers, but I intend to find out.
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