The Sportsmen’s Alliance, Washington sportsmen, agriculture and canine-advocacy groups worked together to remove language in a bill that would have equated the experience of human pain to animal pain as part of a new definition of animal cruelty. Senate Bill 6300 would have defined pain to as “a state of physical or emotional distress that may range from dull distress to agony. It is generally assumed that if an experience is physically painful for a human being, it is also painful for an animal.”
Working with a coalition of sportsmen and agriculture groups, the Sportsmen’s Alliance and its partners persuaded legislators to strip the language that could have easily been applied to common training practices involving hunting dogs, such as tethering, the use of electronic collars and other common practices associated with hunting. The final version of Senate Bill 6300, which has been sent to the governor’s desk, clarifies truly heinous animal-cruelty crimes.
“The original Senate Bill 6300 would have equated how all animals, from a newborn kitten to one-ton buffalo, experience mental, physical and physiological pain or suffering to that of the human experience,” said Jacob Hupp associate director of state services at the Sportsmen’s Alliance. “We’re grateful to our Washington members and partners, and to Sen. Ann Rivers and Rep. Tina Orwall, for working with us to protect sportsmen and the use of dogs for field trials and hunting.”
The Alliance will continue our efforts to track, monitor and work to defeat legislation that intentionally or consequently impacts sportsmen’s rights.
About the Sportsmen’s Alliance: The Sportsmen’s Alliance protects and defends America’s wildlife conservation programs and the pursuits – hunting, fishing and trapping – that generate the money to pay for them. Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation is responsible for public education, legal defense and research. Its mission is accomplished through several distinct programs coordinated to provide the most complete defense capability possible. Stay connected to Sportsmen’s Alliance: Online, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.