Who doesn't want to stop animal abuse? If you own equines or any other animals, you most likely feel queasy any time you hear of an animal being abused. The thought of someone purposely causing physical harm to any sort of animal is unbelievable and intolerable. However, we all know it happens - many times it is unintentional (a person gets in over their heads with the number of animals in their care) but there are cases when people are just plain mean. And when we think about those cases, we typically automatically feel that any sort of legislation to stop, prevent or criminalize animal abuse is a good thing.
However, I would caution you to make sure you understand the details of those legislative proposals before you decide to promote them because you believe that it will eliminate animal cruelty. A couple of western states have ballot initiatives that, on the surface, sound terrific. Similar legislation has been proposed here. As always, the devil is in the details and I would advise you to make sure you understand all of the implications of such proposals.
Colorado has recently had a ballot initiative proposed that would criminalize "animal cruelty". At first glance that sounds great, right? Who doesn't want to stop animal abuse? However, the initiative classifies many practices as animal abuse. One such example is artificial insemination. This practice would be classified as a "sexual act with an animal" and would be punishable. Many of you may not utilize this practice with your horses, but I bet you know someone who does. This practice, which can improve equine genetics quickly and allow matings that might otherwise not happen, would be banned and criminalized. Other practices that would be banned under this initiative include branding and castrating. Again, branding is not done much around here, but is used extensively in the west. And castrating - do we really need all those stallions (or other intact male livestock species) running around? Assisting difficult births could also be labeled as animal cruelty.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled last week that this initiative could not proceed due to some legal details that I won't go into. I would be willing to bet, however, that the proponents of this initiative will try again real soon.
The initiative can be found here:
Colorado is not the only state currently dealing with such an initiative. Oregon also has a similar proposed initiative. It can be found here:
No one wants animals to be abused or mistreated or neglected. But the broad language in these bills provides for the possibility that many of the practices currently used would be criminalized. I would urge you to read and understand the details of such bills before blindly supporting them based solely on the suggestion of reducing animal cruelty.
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