Protecting animals from harm: cosmetic and convenience surgeries, sheltering, wildlife crime, and livestock & Ag-Gag laws

Animals … represent one of the richest windows for understanding ourselves, and it is at this level that scholars may find great opportunities. How we think and act toward them may reveal our most essential conceptions of the social order and unmask our most authentic attitudes toward people. (Arluke, 1993, p. 5)

I’d like to begin this Guest Editor’s Note with a personal reflection. I began this Special Issue project nearly three years ago with the goal of receiving just enough articles to fill a single issue. On the contrary, I had an overwhelming response from authors all over the globe, and from a myriad of academic and practitioner backgrounds, who were writing about topics ranging from animal abuse and interpersonal violence, wildlife crime, animal-assisted therapy/animal-assisted activities, animal rights, the state of animal sheltering today in the US, the recent passage of Ag-Gag laws and others too numerous to mention. Personally, I was not surprised, though I believe some of my colleagues were taken aback by the high volume of submissions on this particular topic. While many of these issues receive the light of the day by scholars in the relatively nascent field of green criminology, they are fairly new or perhaps unknown to a wider audience of criminologists and criminal justice scholars and practitioners. Green criminology emerged around 1990 with an initial focus on the legal framework that addressed environmental crime (Frank & Lynch, 1992; Lynch, 1990); it has broadened its scope by addressing issues such as environmental justice, crimes against non-human animals, animal rights, and corporate crimes related to the environment (Beirne, 2007; South, Brisman, & Beirne, 2013). Perhaps the time has come when ALL harms against human and non-human animals alike necessitate critical examination and analysis in a scholarly venue as well as within public discourse.

‘Do no harm.’ It is an oath taken to heart by those in the medical profession among others. It is also my own personal oath and motto by which I aim to live on a daily basis though I am quite sure I fall short and commit a wide range of ‘harms’ as I go about my business at home, at work, and everywhere in between. But what constitutes harm? Who and what can be a victim of harm? Is the harm committed against the innocent spider I found in the bathtub and subsequently flushed down the toilet the same as the harm done to cattle living (and dying) on a factory farm? To answer these questions, at least in the context of this Note, I turned to my own field of criminology, a discourse which investigates the etiology of harm, violence, and criminal behavior; why, how, and when laws emerge in society in order to understand motivations for harm; the regulation of such behavior; and its social consequence in the form of formal punishment. Ontologically, concepts such as ‘crime,’ ‘deviance,’ ‘harm,’ ‘criminal,’ and ‘victim’ possess no distinct reality. Instead, these terms exist as social constructions, or reflections of the values and beliefs of a particular human society. Moreover, once constructed, these terms are then applied selectively by a state, or governmental, authority to individuals who have violated the state-sanctioned laws. Criminology, then, focuses on not only trying to understand why people commit ‘criminal’ acts but more specifically, it attempts to reveal the origins of state power, how laws are created, how they are applied to human behaviors and motivations, and how the consequences are then administered.

Much in the same vein, victimology, another branch of sociology, examines how, why, when, and who becomes a victim and under what circumstances as well as the roles that victims play in our society. Yet, the term ‘victim’ is socially constructed as well. Who is a victim? Most, if not all, of the victimological literature suggests that the term ‘victim’ implies a human victim, since most of this information contained within the texts centers on human victimization (e.g. stalking, rape, sexual assault, hate crimes, family violence, mentally ill victims, and so on). General definitions of ‘victim’ maintain that a victim is ‘[o]ne who is harmed or killed by another; [a] living creature slain and offered as a sacrifice during a religious rite; [o]ne who is harmed by or made to suffer from an act, circumstance, agency, or condition; [a] person who suffers injury, loss, or death as a result of a voluntary undertaking; [a] person who is tricked, swindled, or taken advantage of’ (The American Heritage® Dictionary, 5th ed., 2011). Based on this definition, in order to be a ‘victim’ of something done to it, him, or her, that being or object must experience ‘harm.’ Harm has been defined as ‘[p]hysical or psychological damage or injury; moral or unjust effects; to do harm to’ (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed., 2011). Upon examining the terms and meanings of victim and harm, one can conclude that animals would likely be included their respective definitions, but it is only within the past few decades that society has really taken notice of the victimization of animals as a distinct social problem.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American and European societies were well aware that animals could be abused, women could be battered and beaten by their husbands and boyfriends, and children could be neglected and victimized sexually, physically, and psychologically. Despite this knowledge, social scientists largely ignored these separate forms of violence as well as the connections among animal cruelty, family and intimate partner violence, and child abuse. For the most part, researchers and policy-makers remained in the dark until they were brought into the light in the 1960s and 1970s when abused children and animals and battered women were somehow ‘rediscovered.’ At that time, this rediscovery viewed children, animals, and battered women as separate agents in a milieu of violence; however, today, social scientists and policy-makers are finally recognizing the interconnections among these different forms of victimization.

But again, I return to some basic questions: what constitutes the abuse and neglect of animals? Moreover, are there differences between domesticated animals – those we consider ‘pets’ or ‘animal companions’ – and livestock or, going further, wildlife? In terms of animal cruelty, all 50 states have laws related to animal abuse and all of these laws make certain acts of animal cruelty a felony (Humane Society of the United States, 2015). However, defining animal abuse poses even more significant challenges primarily because there is no uniform, national definition (Ascione, 2001, 2005). Current literature on animal abuse has also failed to generate a consistent definition of animal abuse, even though researchers, policy-makers, and the general public all acknowledge, to some degree, that animals can experience harm, pain, and abuse. Nonetheless, the following definition encompasses a wide number of characteristics common to this kind of behavior: ‘socially unacceptable behavior that intentionally causes unnecessary pain, suffering, or distress to and/or death of an animal’ (Ascione, 1993, p. 228). This definition intentionally excludes types of harm that may come to animals which are deemed socially acceptable, such as certain agricultural and veterinary practices and legal hunting, but it does include physical abuse and neglect, acts of commission and omission, and sexual abuse (involving bestiality) (Becker & French, 2004). Terms such as ‘pet abuse’ and/or ‘companion animal abuse’ have been used to distinguish these types of abuse from the legal killing of animals for economic reasons, such as for food.

Acknowledging that animals can be victims of harmful acts committed against them against their will or otherwise, here are some of the common definitions of cruelty under early and present-day statutes:

(1)	The unnecessary or cruel torture, mutilation, beating, or killing of an animal.
(2)	The deprivation of necessary sustenance, e.g. food and water, to an impounded animal.
(3)	The use of an animal for fighting or baiting.
(4)	The carrying of an animal in or upon any vehicle in a cruel or inhumane manner.
(5)	The use of dogs for pulling carts, carriages, trucks or other vehicles, for business purposes, without license to do so.
(6)	Abandonment of a maimed, sick or infirmed or disabled animal (Ascione, 2005).

Though statutorily based, these definitions of animal abuse are largely socially constructed and reflect the values humans have toward animals in a particular society, culture, and/or community. For example, definitions of animal cruelty and statuses of animals vary across time, place, cultures, countries, and beliefs. Moreover, a range of factors influence and shape the definition of animal abuse/cruelty. In other words, socially and culturally accepted and sanctioned activities exist, which do, in fact, harm animals such as hunting and killing for food. Along these lines, there are numerous individuals and organizations which contend that killing and eating animals for sustenance is abuse, whereas as others deem the killing of certain animals, such as deer and wolves, a sport and this activity called hunting is the furthest thing from criminal activity.

Generally speaking, there is a continuum of behaviors toward animals by humans that range from mere teasing to torture (Ascione, 2005). Likewise, there is a continuum of the degree of harm inflicted on various species of non-human animals. For example, while many people are appalled at the thought of acts of cruelty being committed against cats and dogs, they may not give much thought to the steak on their plates or their Easter ham (i.e. how it was raised, slaughtered, processed, packaged, and sold at a local grocer near you). So, is harm against one non-human animal species the same as harm against another? Is this perception of degree of harm objective or subjective? In other words, is this all relative and perhaps cultural practices in different societies and communities should be honored and respected (i.e. ‘I’m okay, you’re okay; I’ll leave you alone if you leave me alone’) or are there actual limits to this question of cultural relativism? Researchers like Ascione (2005) assert that limits to cultural relativism should apply to cruelty to animals. In his book entitled, ‘Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony’ (1992), Robert B. Edgerton describes cases where adults encourage children to torture small animals and birds to death. He calls these practices, including acts such as female genital mutilation, as ‘culturally maladaptive,’ noting that,

[a]s much as humans in various societies, whether urban or folk, are capable of empathy, kindness, even love and as much as they can sometimes achieve astounding mastery of the challenges posed by their environments, they are also capable of maintaining beliefs, values, and social institutions that result in senseless cruelty, needless suffering, and monumental folly in their relations among themselves and with other societies and the physical environment in which they live. (p. 15)

Maladaptive and empathetic practices with animals can exist anywhere in the world. Though these issues concerning the standards of ethical treatment of non-human animals are too broad for this Note, they are important to consider when defining animal cruelty and comprehending fully what constitutes harm and whether true degrees of harm exist and, to push this further, whether degrees of harm can even be measured. The promulgation of law, the observation of social phenomena, the determination of crime, harm, and victimization are all entirely human-constructed concepts used to justify ‘what is,’ but can they really account for all experiences accurately or even at all, and that of which I am speaking are those experiences of abuse and harm of non-human animals.

To bring this Note to a close, this second installment of articles centers on the broad topic of protecting animals from harm, specifically harm generated by humans, or human animals. This second volume in the Special Issue on Animals, Justice and the Law ultimately raises difficult questions about societal and cultural practices that have been accepted for a long time and have become institutionalized: cosmetic and convenience surgeries on companion animals, agricultural practices of factory farming, the wolf hunt in Sweden, deer poaching in the UK, euthanasia as regular practice in animal shelters in the US. However, these manuscripts also embody hope and encouragement. Asking whether animal welfare is a public good calls home within each of us that deep, challenging question: what does doing harm to animals do to us as humans in our communities? In other words, can doing good by our non-human animal friends actually benefit our communities, our societies, and our world? Personally, I think it can and already has had a positive impact. I will leave you with this statement from Jeremy Bentham (1789) from his seminal work, ‘An Introduction to the Principles and Morals and Legislation’ and ask you to consider his most salient question about non-human animals: ‘Can they suffer?’

The day has been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny …. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond a comparison of a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? (Note 122, Chapter 17: Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.