Background
Federal protections to animal life remain woefully insufficient for the purposes of creating and implementing a strong enforcement regime against individuals who wilfully or negligently cause physical and psychological injury to animals.
In 2010, President Obama signed a well-meaning but misguided piece of legislation known as the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act. This legislation prohibited the creation and distribution of videos depicting the crushing to death of small animals. The legislation was brought forward following public outcry that horrific acts of animal cruelty were going viral on social media.
However, this legislation focuses more on the distribution (e.g. reportage) of videos depicting the horrific acts in question, rather than the acts themselves. Such flawed policy making is typical of short term thinking in legislation that fails to address the underlying issues behind a legitimate public grievance aimed at ending actual harm.
In 2019, Prescient Trump signed the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act (PACT Act). This legislation helped to address some of the shortcomings in the 2010 legislation. The PACT Act enforces penalties against those convicted of violations of said act, whether or not the act of animal torture was created for the purposes of making a video. This is to be applauded as PACT punishes the heinous act itself rather than the documenting of the act.
The PACT Act also enables federal authorities to investigate alleged acts of animal torture when state resources have been exhausted for the purposes of establishing the perpetration of a criminal act.
However, even this act has many shortcomings.
Closing legislative gaps and ending the cruelty
The PACT Act defines “animal crushing” as “actual conduct in which 1 or more [animals] is intentionally crushed, burned, drowned, suffocated, impaled, or otherwise subjected to serious bodily injury”.
Although the granularity of this text from the legislation is more instructive than that of the 2010 legislation, sentencing and enforcement remains weak.
It is therefore necessary to change the language of “animal crushing” and replace it with acts of “malicious or negligent animal cruelty”. This definition should include both acts of physical cruelty as well as psychological cruelty - both of which are relatively easy to document by forensic veterinary specialists.
Strong penalties are needed
According to the Animal Welfare Institute, “71 percent of pet-owning domestic violence survivors reported that their abusers had threatened, injured, or killed their pets”. It can therefore be reasonably concluded that acts of cruelty against pets and other domestic animals have two victims. One victim is the animal and the other is the animal’s human companion.
Sentences for those found guilty of acts of malicious or negligent cruelty should therefore be strengthened for two reasons. First, as a society in which domestic animals are valued as sentient and irreplaceable beings, the life of an animal should be treated in such a way that those who commit actual harms against it face exemplary justice.
Second, most reasonable people understand that pets and other domesticated animals are often referred to and are manifestly treated as family members by their human companions. Therefore, sentences for those found guilty of animal cruelty should be elevated to that which resembles sentences for those who commit acts of abuse against minors.
There is copious psychological and sociological research which attests to the fact that the wanton deprivation of an animal companion by an act of cruelty has a devastating emotional impact on said human. This must be addressed in the sentencing of those found guilty of animal cruelty.
Public policy justifications
In a high trust society, social admonitions against animal cruelty would be nearly sufficient to protect animals and their human companions from cruelty. However, in an era where multiple forms of crime continue to spiral, it becomes necessary for law enforcement to protect the most vulnerable. This includes children and should also include animals.
While much animal welfare legislation falls outside the jurisdiction of the federal government, policies that effectively amend and strengthen the PACT Act will serve as a useful guide to state and municipal jurisdictions who wish to enforce similar measures.
For both practical and cultural considerations, these proposed regulations would not apply to the extermination of vermin/pests, ranching/farming or animals that are lawfully hunted.
Conclusion
At a federal, state and municipal level, much more needs to be done to safeguard the welfare of vulnerable animals. Until the scope of animal welfare laws is expanded and sentencing is strengthened, animals will continue to be unnecessarily vulnerable.