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“This measure would make it a class C felony for an individual to maliciously and intentionally harm a living dog, cat or horse and provide a court with certain sentencing options. The measure would not apply to production agriculture, or to lawful activities of hunters and trappers, licensed veterinarians, scientific researchers, or to individuals engaged in lawful defense of life or property.”
Suppose a horse owner has an aging, sick animal. This measure would expose that owner to legal liability if the horse were euthanized without a veterinarian present.
Now, if you’ve ever had occasion to visit or spend time in North Dakota, you’d agree with the joke about a 150-mile run to the store. Veterinarians—heck, people—tend to be few and far between in the Flickertail State (that’s its nickname; look it up) and paying for hundreds of miles of travel so the vet can spend five minutes administering an injections makes no sense. (Source: Pork Network)
The proposed law doesn’t take into consideration the realities of ND. It also doesn’t define concepts like customary agricultural practices, leaving it to the courts to figure out. Since when does a judge know what a customary practice for agriculture is? Trust me, they don’t learn that in law school. Instead, the proposal randomly picks a couple types of animals and tries to make the whole thing look fuzzy and warm.
“We definitely want to protect the animals,” said Jason Schmidt, chairman of the N.D. Animal Stewards and a rancher near Medina, N.D “We deal with them everyday, they are our livelihood. We need the animals to be healthy and safe, we also need the people that care for those animals to be protected.”
