Utah Gossip

Utah was ranked by the Animal Legal Defense Fund as having the weakest animal abuse laws in the entire country. (Right at the bottom with Utah was Alaska, Arkansas, Kentucky, and North Dakota.) This is unacceptable, Utah! Nearly every day, we hear a story of high school kids pulling pranks such as stealing and killing a sheep, and hanging it from their rival football team’s crossbars. Or stomping a pheasant to death because it wandered onto a football field.

This is NOT normal behavior! Kids have been taught to treat animals without any kindness, and many people here have the (medieval) theory that animals don’t have any type of feelings. Yes, they can feel pain. Stomping a pheasant to death is a cruel, terrible way for the poor bird to die, yet kids did it without any thoughts that it might be a terrible and cruel thing to do. Killing and torturing animals is not funny or acceptable!

Utah needs to pass Henry’s Law, a law that would make animal cruelty a felony. (Currently in Utah, harming and abusing animals is just a misdemeanor, if it’s even prosectured.) Utah needs to get out of the dark ages, and work to protect animals. There are strong correlations between people abusing animals and then moving on to abuse people.

This low ranking is an embarassment to Utah. We need to step it up, and take care of our animals. They deserve better from us.