Dom Post on animal cruelty
January 18th, 2010 at 11:00 am by David FarrarThe Dom Post editorial:
The never-ending litany of what human beings do to animals every year in this country makes the average person feel sick. But a group of people delights in the thought – and the act – of torturing animals, sometimes someone else’s pet.
If National’s Tauranga MP, Simon Bridges, is lucky, such persecutors will face greater jail time in future. When Parliament resumes, he will put into the members’ ballot a private member’s bill to increase the maximum penalty for wilful ill-treatment of animals from three, to five years’ imprisonment.
His rationale is simple. “A tougher penalty,” he says, “would … be in line with increasingly clear research that those who do serious harm to animals are much more likely to perpetrate family, as well as other violence. In addition, the research shows that psychopathic offenders, often as first offending, demonstrate a propensity for cruelty through abuse of animals”.
Mr Bridges is right. The FBI in the United States has recognised the connection since the 70s, when it analysed the lives of serial killers.
Such individuals have their wiring seriously mucked up. I can understand why people commit most crimes, but can’t understand how anyone can get pleasure from torturing animals.
It is to be hoped Mr Bridges has the luck of the Greens in having his bill chosen from the ballot. Or he might be able to persuade ministerial colleagues whose portfolios touch on the subject – such as Corrections Minister Judith Collins or Agriculture Minister David Carter – to sponsor his measure as a Government Bill. This initiative is overdue and such support would give it heft.
It will be good to see the penalties increased, regardless of how it happens.
Related posts:
- Animal cruelty bill to be fast-tracked?
- Harsher penalties for animal cruelty
- Netherlands outlaws animal sex
- Bridges wins Tauranga nomination
January 18th, 2010 at 11:52 am
“I can understand why people commit most crimes, but can’t understand how anyone can get pleasure from torturing animals.”
They do it because it’s the next best thing for cowardly psychopaths who haven’t (yet) worked up the nerve to try it on a human. Good move to stamp them out when they show the first signs.
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
“I can understand why people commit most crimes, but can’t understand how anyone can get pleasure from torturing animals.”
This is what you engage in if you are a meat eater. They are tortured in the factory farms and slaughterhouses and then consumers derive pleasure from eating them.
nzdairy.webs.com
nzeggs.webs.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebTQXkMUqt0
Animal abuse on an individual scale is sickening enough, but what about the large scale animal abuse that is perpetrated by the meat and dairy industries?
Millions of animals every year are being brutally abused and inhumanely slaughtered every year just to satisfy our convenience and appetites.
Please start thinking not only about the beautiful animal friends in your home, but about those who are living and dying in horrific conditions that should not be inflicted on any living thing.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6361872964130308142&ei=jW1TS6WFJIG-wgOC2tSxBQ&q=ea…rthlings
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
Thanks for your concern Anna, but meat will continue to be on my diet, and the cats will be very grateful for the tid-bits which fall from my plate
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Hope it includes safety for Rats,
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Meat is great.
As is shooting. Particularly rabbits, possums and other varmints. I see it as doing my bit for the environment.
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Every piece of meat you don’t buy is one that I can buy cheaper.
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Mmmm I just had the greatest chicken sandwich for lunch…
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
You’re right Anna, dying from being clonked on the head by ole’ painless is so cruel and inhumane, we should allow animals their right to die as nature intended – by getting too old or sick to gather enough food, ultimately collapsing in a ditch somehwere and dying in agony of disease and starvation probably over a period of days while birds pick out their eyes.
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
This type of thread always brings out the fuckwits.
Bridges is talking about animal cruelty, nothing else, sadly there are some low life out there who think it is fun to torture animals and these bastards deserve to feel the full force of the law.
Nowhere does Bridges say or suggest we should stop being nation of meat eaters, and anybody of a right mind would agree.
I eat meat, I bloody well enjoy it but I make the choice to eat free range pork and chicken and I make the choice to eat farm kill beef and lamb.
IMHO all animals we farm for food have the right to a quick, painless and most importantly an unexpected death.
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
I hope this gets selected and garners the support of all parties. A society should be measured on how it treats or looks after its lowest (for lack of a better word) members.
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
Bullion – I understand your sentiment but animals are not members of society. They are part of the food chain, and in some cases are pets.
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Every comment I’ve ever seen from an anti-meater eater has just provided further illustration of how important an adequate supply of iron, creatine and protein is for brain function.
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
“You’re right Anna, dying from being clonked on the head by ole’ painless is so cruel and inhumane, we should allow animals their right to die as nature intended – by getting too old or sick to gather enough food, ultimately collapsing in a ditch somehwere and dying in agony of disease and starvation probably over a period of days while birds pick out their eyes.”
Is that how you let your pets die? What an a-hole! When our dog got sick we took him to a vet who put him to sleep painlessly. You should try that next time instead of letting birds pluck out their eye balls. Just a thought.
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Radar, what do pets have to do with it, we were talking about animals we eat for food ? I was obviously contrasting the ludicrous position of the veggie fundamentalists that the way humans kill animals is “inhumane”, when really it’s a shitload more humane than the way an animal typically dies at the hands of kindly old mother nature. Your inability to follow an chain of argument makes me think you’re short of the vital nutrients for brain function and in need of a nice big steak…
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
People are often kinder to old pets than old relatives – when they get past it they get put down with dignity, and aren’t kept alive suffering for as long as possible.
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 4:41 pm
So why isn’t this a government Bill? Come to that, why wasn’t it a Labour government Bill? What possible objection can there be to toughening up the penalties imposed on people who commit these sorts of crimes?
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
“Radar, what do pets have to do with it, we were talking about animals we eat for food ? I was obviously contrasting the ludicrous position of the veggie fundamentalists that the way humans kill animals is “inhumane”, when really it’s a shitload more humane than the way an animal typically dies at the hands of kindly old mother nature.”
Or we could not raise animals to slaughter in the first place?
And anyone who thinks that the way animals are slaughtered now is humane has either not seen how it is done, or is a psycho with no ability to feel compassion for others.
Vote:January 18th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
This tosser wants to increase the penalty from 3 years to 5 when the highest sentence dished out so far is 10 months? Give me a break.
Vote:I was leaning over the back fence a while ago patting a beastie thinking how good he is going to taste on the barbie in a few weeks but he will never know what hit him. I hope I will be so lucky when my time comes.
January 18th, 2010 at 7:32 pm
It is so fashionable to ask for harsher sentences for animal abusers because we finally recognise what has been known for decades; that animal torturers frequently show psycopathy towards humans later in life. Literature is loaded with evidence of this. And if this is what it takes to punish these “misfits” then so be it.
Vote:But it pains me to know that our own self interest had to become paramount before we thought seriously about punishing the rotten arseholes who thoughtlessly or purposely do acts of cruelty that would make a “normal” person feel sick.
The SPCA tells me that the incidence of this cruelty is increasing.
Any intelligent, realistic person knows why, but no one is saying. Funny that.