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If that weren’t enough, while dealing with that case, the SPCA received another chicken-abuse complaint after a woman walking her dog June 28 beside an Abbotsford farm filmed workers “picking up chickens upside down and allegedly throwing them into crates and jamming them shut while chickens were still protruding,” according to an article by Postmedia News reporter Stephanie Ip.

Animal abuse is a complex issue, with a range of abusers. Some are kids who don’t know better or perhaps have been raised in lousy homes where kindness and compassion may not have been taught.

Sometimes mental-health issues are linked to abuse, or cruelty is perpetrated by people who incorrectly think they’re doing the right thing in putting down an animal in ways that are illegal.

Animal torture by young people, mental-health professionals tell us, can be an early warning sign of psychopathy.

Or, perhaps in the chicken cases, people in low-paying, crappy jobs can be cruel out of boredom, contempt for the difficult-to-catch animals they’re sending to slaughter, peer pressure or out of the one-upmanship some people can get up to when in a group.

There is also not one, shared standard of care for animals in our society — from some farm workers who see animals only as products without feeling, to vegans who believe all animal slaughter for food is inherently cruel. Most people’s views lie somewhere in the middle.

Fortunately, we have the law, which demands that animals not be exposed to “unnecessary pain, suffering or injury,” and it’s about time we got more serious in punishing those who refuse to obey it.