Response to Dara Lovitz's Class Visit

I really liked the presentation Dara Lovitz gave about animal law because I felt like she was really honest. For the first half of it I was a little frustrated hearing about the animal laws that have been passed because while it is obviously a great thing that enough people care about animals to have laws passed for them, those laws are quite apparently not enough. The truth is, regardless of whatever laws that are out there, there is still continues to be and will continue to be unjustifiable amounts of animal suffering. Fortunately, this is what the second half of Dara’s presentation was about. She wasn’t afraid to say that the animal cruelty laws only protect less than 3% of animals and that they don’t do much service at all in the big picture. It was also really frustrating to hear that there’s something called a Common Farming Exemption which exempts farm animals from any animal cruelty legislation. Dara told us that 95% of animals are farmed animals, so this means that 95% of animals are excluded from animal cruelty laws, and this is because the people who run animal farming are the ones who write the regulations.

Probably the most positive thing I got out of the lecture is the fact that Pennsylvania has a law that makes cruelty to animals illegal (except farm animals of course). This is nice to know just for the reason that if you find a case where someone is neglecting or abusing their pets, they will get in trouble for it. So, even if it is an exclusive law, at least some animals are being protected. That’s better than none, right? And there are certainly enough domesticated animals in Pennsylvania to make it significant.