A sentient being is a life form sensitive to feeling or perception. Humans like to think we are the only life form capable of being sentient. Whether or not animals are sentient depends on who you ask. Sentience, when it comes to animals, is a question of do they feel pain and experience suffering. Weak and poorly enforced laws enacted to protect animals, in essence, say they are not sentient beings. The Animal Welfare Act of 1966 was not meant to protect or give rights to pets. The law defined animals as property and continues to do so today. Public outrage spearheaded by two articles in 1965 and 1966 that exposed animal cruelty and the ugly side of dog dealers and dog thieves was the driving force that caused Congress to act. Unfortunately, not a lot has changed over the years. Legal animal cruelty will continue as long as animals are classified as property, research labs continue using animals in experiments and product testing, animal abuse laws remain weak and people continue to buy pets from stores supplied by puppy and kitten mills.
In 1965, Sports Illustrated told the story of a Dalmatian named Pepper that had been stolen from her family by a dog dealer and sold to a research lab where she was killed in the name of science. In 1966 another article in the February issue of Life Magazine, “Concentration Camp for Dogs,” showed through pictures, horrific cruelty dogs suffered at the Maryland dog farm of a dog dealer who sold animals to research labs. The Laboratory Animal Welfare Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on August 24, 1966.
The Animal Welfare Act regulated how animals were to be handled, sold and transported. Dog and cat dealers selling to research facilities and the laboratories buying pets had to be licensed only if the transported animals crossed state lines. Dealers and research labs had to provide identification for their animals to prove they weren’t stolen pets being used in research. However, research labs only had to register if they received government funding and the pets came from out of state. Enforcement of the law was under the jurisdiction of the USDA, but once a dog, cat, hamster, primate, rabbit or guinea pig was in a research facility, the USDA had limited authority on what happened inside the lab and could only control the treatment of animals being held for pre-research.
The Animal Welfare Act was amended for the first time in 1970. The new amendment included all warm blooded animals used in research and tweaked the requirement to say dealers must be registered regardless of whether the animals were transported in state or across state lines. New guidelines were added to require the use of anesthetics or drugs to tranquillize animals during research experiments. The word “laboratory” was dropped and the 1966 law was officially renamed, the Animal Welfare Act. Because the new amendment set minimum standards with loose licensing requirements for breeders that sold their puppies through pet stores; it made puppy mills legal to operate.
Public outrage over dog fighting rings once again caused Congress to move to amended the Animal Welfare Act in 1976 to make it illegal to transport dogs state to state or to another country for use in dog fighting. It also defined a “carrier” as someone who transports any regulated animals covered under the AWA and required shippers to be licensed. Shipping containers needed to have good ventilation. People transporting animals would have to be aware of the temperature, provide adequate food and water and handle the animals in a humane matter which included rest when needed during transportation.
Standards were updated in 1985 to include new jurisdiction for the USDA to oversee animal welfare in labs for animals used in research, for use in school labs at colleges and universities, animals used in exhibits and marine mammals. Exercise for the animals was now required and the psychological health for primates was included in the law. To reduce pain and suffering of animals during research, alternative methods were to be applied when possible.
To address the problem of stolen pets, the Pet Theft Act was added to the Animal Welfare Act in 1990 requiring dogs and cats be held for a minimum of five days at shelters before they could be sold to a research laboratory. This was to give pet owners time to find lost or stolen pets.
The definition of animals covered by the Animal Welfare Act was changed in 2002 to say rats, mice and birds bred specifically for research labs are excluded from protection under the law. The last update to the law was in 2007. This amendment made it illegal to knowingly sell, buy, transport or deliver a bird with a knife, a metal spur or any sharp instrument attached to its leg for use in bird fights for interstate or foreign bird fighting rings.
The Animal Welfare Act is a toothless and poorly enforced law that’s outdated. It needs major overhauling that redefines pets as sentient beings capable of feeling pain and suffering and affords them rights protected by a tough law with aggressive enforcement against animal cruelty by research labs, puppy and kitten mills, dog dealers, animal shelters and irresponsible pet owners. As long as pets are considered nothing more than property, legal animal cruelty will continue under the guise of the Animal Welfare Act.
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