In the present climate of divided party politics, one thing agreed upon by every single member of both the Senate and the House of Representatives is that animal cruelty is unacceptable. A unanimous vote by both legislative bodies has passed a bill called the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act, or PACT. Violators convicted of an animal cruelty felony will face up to 7 years in prison.
The new law closed the loophole on a 2010 law that prohibited the creation and distribution of videos depicting animal abuse but not the abuse itself. Now, the horrific acts of animal cruelty themselves are illegal. The law will make it easier to apprehend offenders who previously might have slipped past the system via a patchwork of state laws that very often did not align with each other.
