Animal Rights - Animal Abuse

Animal Rights - Animal Abuse

ANIMAL RIGHTS: LEGAL and ETHICAL ISSUES

Throughout history, man has used animals for food, for their strength to accomplish mechanical tasks and for the raw materials for everything from winter clothing to tools and weapons. Man, unfortunately, also has a long history of inhumanity to his fellow man, and of cruelty to animals. In much of the rest of the world, cultural attitudes reflect a continuing insensitivity to animals, working them to death, and hunting them to extinction for decorative ivory and superstitious uses of their ground up bones, or harvesting one part such as by hauling them from the water to slice off their fins before tossing them back into the water to sink to the ocean floor and drown.

In the United States, cultural values first began to recognize the moral issue of causing unnecessary pain to animals in the middle of the 19th century and the American Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) was founded in 1866 when it busied itself with preventing cruelty to carriage horses, among other things (Moussaieff- Mason & McCarthy 1995). Nevertheless, animal cruelty legislation still varies widely from state to state, defining cruelty to animals as a felony in some states but only as a misdemeanor or violation in others (HSUS 2007). Aside from the inherent insensitivity of perpetrating cruelty on helpless animals, modern criminologists have identified cruelty to animals, particularly among youths, as one significant predictor of pathological criminality and serial violent offenders (Schmalleger 1997). At the most extreme end of the criminality spectrum, criminal profilers who have interviewed serial killers have also concluded that there is a strong link between cruelty to animals and predisposition to serial murder of human beings (Innes 2007). A large volume of similar evidence suggests that deliberate cruelty to animals is associated with all forms of criminal violence, including the most recent series of school shootings within the last decade, since Columbine (HSUS 2007).

The Current State of Criminal Legislation and Future Recommendations:

Despite advances in criminal legislation, many types of animal cruelty are still permitted by law. Only 43 states currently punish animal cruelty as a felony with, Hawaii being the most recent to adopt stricter criminal penalties for animal cruelty in 2007, after the passing of Senate Bill 1665 and House Bill 676 (HSUS 2007). In the seven other states, even the most barbaric torture of animals is only punishable as a minor crime. Even in the 43 states prosecuting some forms of animal cruelty as felonies, there are many types of treatment to which animals are exposed without triggering the effect of penal law. Whereas torturing animals is prohibited by law and defined as criminal behavior in some cases, other types of equally torturous actions are completely legal. For example, the laws of many states sanction killing so-called "nuisance" animals by electrocution or drowning when performed by licensed pest removal companies; in many cases, these same acts are defined as cruel when perpetrated gratuitously. The fur industry is well-known to house minks and other animals raised for their coats in cruel conditions and to kill them by such devices as anal electrical probes designed to kill without damaging fur (HSUS 2007).

The problem is that the underlying rationale for criminalizing animal cruelty is that animals (even those defined as "pests") feel physical pain the same as animals protected as "pets" in our culture. Unfortunately, the fact that killing an animal by drowning is legal does nothing to diminish its suffering.

In that respect, it is curious that so many people seem to believe that animals raised for slaughter deserve no protection from cruelty. Even many of those who support animal cruelty laws completely understand that animals raised for the slaughter house (or for harvesting their fur) can be housed humanely and in compassionate circumstances and in horribly cruel torturous conditions. Just last week, hidden video shot in a major cattle slaughter facility was widely publicized, prompting the largest beef recall in the nation.

While the reason for the recall relates to fear of Mad Cow disease, the video of animals too weak to stand being prodded by electrical cattle prods and shoved around by loading sleds also depicts the appalling lack of humanity associated with the beef industry. Except for the connection to potential transmission of disease to human beings, it is doubtful that the same video would have had much public interest. Animal rights organizations like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have been documenting similar occurrences for years without much effect.