Iowa congresswoman praises passage of animal cruelty bill

WASHINGTON — Iowa Congresswoman Cindy Axne is praising the signing last week of the PACT Act –which stands for the Prevention of Animal Cruelty and Torture Act. “The PACT Act is a bill that makes sure that those who make animal crush videos, or who torture animals, and who put that on video, are actually punished for that and it is seen as a crime,” Axne says. “The bill in the past has been written so that the videos, themselves, were a crime, but the act of cruelty was not a crime.”

Axne says the bill had bipartisan support in the Senate and the House. She says many people don’t realize that animal cruelty is a big problem in the country.  “Unfortunately, we’ve seen too many stories in Iowa and Nebraska, in our own region across this country, where animals are being abused, thrown to the wayside in garbage cans, abused in puppy mills situations, abused in multiple areas. We had a veterinarian here in Iowa that was accused of abusing animals–debarking them without any anesthesia,” according to Axne.

The West Des Moines Democrat says most members of Congress agree that abusing animals is wrong.  “We all realize that we can’t abuse animals in this country,” she says. “So, I’m thrilled to see this go through. I’ve been a champion of this. I’ve fought against puppy mills in our own state before I went to Congress. Treating animals properly has been near and dear to me growing up, so I’m happy to see this put into place.”

Among other things, the bill establishes fines and a maximum seven-year prison sentence for animal crushing crimes.

The bill passed the House in late October, then the Senate in November. It was signed by the president last week.