opinion

Lawmakers say horses aren't animals

A strike-everything bill that passed the Senate today is ostensibly about animal hoarding. But that's just the sheep's clothing.

The bill would "weaken the already-meager protections for farm animals in Arizona," according to Paul Shapiro of the Humane Society of the United States.

HB 2150 includes what Shapiro calls "a few red-herring provisions . . . to give the illusion that it benefits animals." But what it really does is separate poultry and livestock from animal cruelty statutes so that agriculture lobbyists can "chip away at protections in the newly-separated statute without fear of angering dog and cat advocates," he says.

Like so much of what Arizona's lawmakers are doing this year, the bill also weakens local control by prohibiting "a county, city or town from enacting an ordinance that relates to the treatment of livestock, poultry or animal husbandry practices that is more prohibitive or restrictive than current law."

This would prevent cities from banning backyard slaughter of animals. Nor could local communities step in to correct other animal husbandry "practices" that might occur across the alley from your house.

Shapiro is from the national Humane Society. But the Arizona Human Society also opposes a bill that would essentially do away with any punishment for someone who abandoned an injured horse in the desert.

"It's appalling," the Arizona group says on its website.

"Even a child in kindergarten knows that cattle, sheep and horses are animals. However, under HB 2150, livestock and poultry would be excluded from Arizona's definition of animals found in our criminal code. Since they will no longer be considered animals, the 13 categories of animal abuse currently on the books will no longer protect these animals," the Arizona Humane Society says.

Livestock would be protected by two new standards, which will "create loopholes that will allow heinous abuses to go unpunished," the Arizona Humane Society says.

The Arizona Farm Bureau support this bill. Lobbyist Joe Sigg said by e-mail: "It is needed to avoid the unintended consequences of well-intentioned non-ag lobbyists when they propose bills dealing with companion animals, and they fail to survey the totality of what they propose to regulate."

If there are problems, then they should be discussed openly.

This is a stealth effort. Last year, the agricultural community attempted to get a similar bill through the process. Strong opposition from animal rights groups stopped them.

This year, they put the provisions into a strike-everything amendment, which allows a bill to slip more silently through the process.

Sigg also says, "No right thinking person abuses animals."

Of course, he's right.

But no right thinking person robs banks, either. We still have laws against it.

Animal cruelty laws to protect food animals grew out of past problems. Real problems. Not some imaginary ideas from bunny huggers.

Weakening those laws at the behest of the agricultural industry is not a good idea.