Farm Bill: There's Good with the Bad and Ugly

[flvegan]

I'm only posting the "good" parts of this $300 billion monster here from Wayne's blog at HSUS.org...

The Farm Bill includes a provision, inserted in the original Senate bill by Majority Whip Richard Durbin, to curb the import of puppies for commercial sale from foreign puppy mills. A growing number of breeders in Eastern European countries, China, Mexico, and other foreign countries see the United States as a potential market and are shipping tens of thousands of dogs in, even though there is a strong domestic dog and cat breeding industry here and there are millions of pets available from shelters, rescue groups, and U.S. breeders. The provisions require that any dog imported into the United States for commercial sale be at least 6 months old, to ensure that young, unweaned, and unvaccinated puppies are not forced to suffer from harsh, long-distance transport. They also ensure that any dog entering the United States be deemed healthy prior to entry. Exceptions are provided so as not to interfere with shelter and rescue work, veterinary treatment, or research purposes.

This provision has potential to dramatically slow the inhumane trade in puppies into the United States. That will bring great relief to dogs right now, but it will also be a bulwark against the development of a massive puppy breeding industry in China and other countries that might see the United States as an even more lucrative market for puppy sales, notwithstanding serious animal welfare concerns.

There's also what I call the Michael Vick provision, and this measure has potentially enormous consequences for the future of dogfighting and cockfighting in this country. The Congress upgraded the federal animal fighting law last spring at The HSUS's urging, making it a federal felony to move fighting animals in interstate or foreign commerce. Then the Vick case broke, and there was unprecedented national attention on the scourge of dogfighting. The Vick case prompted a raft of state legislation to upgrade animal fighting laws, and it also prompted the introduction of new bills by Sen. John Kerry and Reps. Betty Sutton, Elton Gallegly, and Earl Blumenauer to further upgrade the federal law against animal fighting. Sen. Kerry offered his bill as an amendment on the Senate Farm Bill, and it was accepted. In the conference committee on the Farm Bill, thanks primarily to the exceptional work of House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (with the assistance of his Senate counterpart, Patrick Leahy), the legislation was strengthened further to toughen the federal animal fighting law by making it a crime to knowingly possess or train animals for fighting, enhancing the penalty for animal fighting offenses from a potential three-year prison sentence to a maximum five-year prison sentence, and making any animal fighting affecting interstate or foreign commerce a federal crime.

In addition to cracking down on all staged animal fights that are organized in the United States, the federal legislation also bans the export of fighting animals to other nations. Yesterday, Jeremy Schwartz of Cox News Service wrote a story about how U.S. fighting birds, specifically birds from Georgia, are dominating in fights in Mexico. Under existing law, shipping fighting birds outside of a state—to another state or another country—is a felony-level offense. So the federal government can crack down on it now. But if the animal fighting provision in the Farm Bill is approved, it will strengthen the federal case against these lawbreakers even more.

http://hsus.typepad.com/wayne/2008/05/farm-bill.html

[Annces]

1. Humane Society must really have its hands full

dealing with China. The way they treat animals is the worst possible.