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50 Ecology L. Currents 1 (2023)

handle is hein.journals/ecolwcur50 and id is 1 raw text is: Animals Too Ugly to Protect? The PACT Act Needs an Update Mia Petrucci, Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University ABSTRACT This Article examines the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act.1 The PACT Act criminalizes (1) the intentional crushing of nonhuman animals, (2) the creation of animal crush videos,2 and (3) the selling, distributing, marketing, exchanging, or advertising of animal crush videos in interstate or foreign commerce.3 The Act defines animal crushing to include conduct in which living non-human mammals, birds, reptiles, or amphibians [are] purposely crushed, burned, drowned, suffocated, impaled, or otherwise subjected to serious bodily injury.4 The PACT Act passed unanimously through the Senate on November 5, 2019.5 The PACT Act excludes low-value, sentient animals-like fish and insects-from its protection, despite the fact that these animals are some of the most abused animals in animal crush videos.6 Therefore, the PACT Act should be amended to include them. Section I of this Article introduces the phenomenon of animal crushing and studies previous legislative initiatives to regulate animal crushing. Section II examines the plain text of the PACT Act and discusses animals excluded from its protection. This section presents the concept of animal hierarchies to explain what constitutes low- and high-value animals and why all animals should receive the same legal protections against cruelty. Finally, recommendations are made in section III to (1) amend the PACT Act and (2) take future actions to fill holes in the animal legislative scheme. This Article argues that the definition of animal crushing should include the torture of low-value animals. Because the PACT Act presents a legitimate governmental interest in preventing animal cruelty, this interest could extend to low-value animals in other federal animal welfare law. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15779/Z38WW7714F 1. Animal Crushing, 18 U.S.C. § 48. 2. Animal crush video includes photograph[s], motion-picture film, video or digital recording, or electronic image that depicts animal crushing and is obscene. Id. § 48(f)(2). 3. Id. § 48(a). 4. Id. § 48(f)(1). 5. H.R. 724, 116 Cong. (2019). 6. Jeremy Biles, I, Insect, or Bataille and the Crush Freaks, 7 JANUS HEAD 115, 116 n.4 (2004). 1

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