Animal cruelty - should penalties be harsher?

[Frosty6611]

I volunteer at a local cat charity and the levels of abuse and neglect that some of these poor creatures have endured before they have arrived at the charity is disgusting!
I personally think anyone who has any sort of pet should have to seek a licence beforehand and have their homes checked to make sure they are going to be suitable for the animal.
I also think animal cruelty cases should be given much harsher penalties. I know our prisons are really struggling and at maximum capacity, but it just doesn’t sit right with me that someone could torture an innocent animal and walk away Scott free or with a small fine.

Keef, how do you make sure that the slaughterhouse your sheep end up in aren't cruel to them? The atrocities that we're filmed in slaughterhouses (including an organic one) a couple of years ago were far worse than having stones thrown in a field. If you are a farmer and really against cruelty, the only way to guarantee everything is humane is to do the killing yourself or watch while it's done.

My sheep don't go to a slaughter house, they are pedigree wool sheep and produce rams for commercial sale. Te few males that don't make the grade are slaughter by a very good friend and are handled by DH throughout (who they know very well). I am obsessive about the care of my sheep, they are my life.

I've just spent 3 hours grooming them this morning - they are such pretty well behaved girls.

But yes, many slaughter houses are inhuman and utterly horrific. I think the men working their become hardened and have nom empathy, it's awful. I eat almost no meat, relying on eggs from my hens for most of my protein, and goats milk from my 2 goats. We get about 5 male lambs for the freezer a year, raise 4 turkeys (xmas, easter, dh birthday and a summer celebration meal) which DH dispatches.

Most meat eaten in this country is cruelly produced and unsustainable. If you spent a day with cattle and then 2 mins in a slaughterhouse you would stop eating beef - they are such intelligent wonderful animals. Pigs are more intelligent than dogs and have complex behaviours, my sheep have individual personalities and talk to me all day long. In the UK people are very 'removed' from animal and don't respect them. I think they are better than humans, in many ways.

*there

Sorry full of typos - I get all stressed out!

I once saw a documentary about a pig slaughterhouse in America and it was the most horrific thing I’ve ever watched in my life. There were hidden cameras and the staff were enjoying torturing them. It’s put me off pork for life and I try and limit the rest of my meat to once a week and fish once a week.

I think penalties should have consequences for employment - like a marker. If you hurt a child there are.

Yes. But I feel like the focus should be preventing abuse and not punishment (unless in extreme cases).

Not because I like animal abusers but because I feel like it will benefit animals much more.

It would however have to extend to farm animals and conditions in slaughter houses as well...

Things like dog owning license (e.g.) would teach people how to look after dogs, keep non- licensed people from buying dogs. (Or cats, horses etc.)

Whereas stricter penalties wouldn't help the animals. A bite-y dog may still be pts.

And many animal abusers wouldn't be caught...

There's also the aspect of some owners not knowing how to properly care for their pet. (Obviously only an issue with neglect and not abuse cases.)

A lot of abuse stems from ignorance and neglect.

A lot of it is down right abuse ( if you have a strong enough stomach you can look up the video the brothers made of themselves with Baby the Bulldog)

Like the Coco-Cola Sponsered Rodeos

And abbatoirs and laboratories

You cannot unsee .

I agree with harsher penalties. How do lifetime bans work? Is there a register of some kind that animal rescue organisations can check?

I think animal abuse should also come up if a DBS check is done and an animal abuser (or domestic abuser) should not be able to care for vulnerable people such as young children, disabled or elderly people. SS should also be notified. Abuse is abuse.

Keef, I'm a vegan, but if I had to eat meat again I think the approach you take when your sheep get slaughtered is the best approach. In my ideal world, everyone would be vegan so no animals would be killed. However, in today's meat-eating world, it would be much better if animals were killed on the farm where they were raised, killed by the farmer who they know and trust so they don't know anything bad is coming and a quick bullet.

If people ate less meat, maybe this could be the way things are done and we wouldn't need slaughterhouses with the agonising deaths the animals experience in them.

Meymary, I agree with you to an extent. However, the two ideas are linked - if people were harshly punished for animal cruelty, then this would act as a deterrent to others.

People wanting to eat meat every day are the people driving animal cruelty. Even if you don't want to be veggie, eat less meat and make sure you know that the way the animal lived and died is a way that you would be happy for a family pet to live and die.

The issue I see with being vegan is that if you live in this country, you are reliant on imported protein sources for at least some of the year, and we eat sustainable local food. I am friends with a lot of vegans and think its a great choice for many people, especially friends in Australia, California and the Caribbean who eat local food, but here in the UK there would be too much reliance on imported food for me. Imported vegetarian protein sources are often grown at the expense of local wildlife populations and exported at cost to the local populations diet - eg Quinoa etc.

It is hard to live ethically when we are a plague species destroying the world but it heartens me to see people try.