Animal Cruelty Bill Better Defined

The Idaho beef industry has been working hard with their legislators to ensure that a animal cruelty bill did what it was intended to do - protect both pets and production animals from cruelty without having any twisting or slanting of definitions. Idaho Cattle Association Executive Vice President Wyatt Prescott says
Prescott: “However unfortunately often times when we have these conversations organizations like HSUS — who has a full time lobbyist in the state of Idaho — and have a sole mission of abolishing animal agriculture eventually. Tend to get their hands on legislation and try to put their fingerprint on it in an effort to help further their end goal. The original drafts of those pieces of legislation very much had their finger prints on them and were a very big concern to the cattle industry that could have indicted some common production practices under the umbrella of cruelty. We made sure that didn’t happen. We helped draft legislation that actually tightened up the difference between companion and production animals making sure that the animals that we use for food production are in a different category. Then we went on and made a definition for torture. So those folks who are intentionally causing suffer to animals will have a separate provision that they can be tried under of torture and ultimately can be lead to a felony provision.”