April 2024

Kelly Crouch, CFA Legislative Information Liaison

U.S. HR 5041

Some in the animal welfare community argue that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is not sufficiently aggressive when applying penalties to violators of the Animal Welfare Act and hasn’t been for many years. They suggested that the Department of Justice (DOJ) may be better suited to deal with the enforcement of the AWA, but previous attempts to legislate DOJ’s involvement failed. Then, on September 27, 2023, Representative Reschenthaler introduced HR 5041, the Better CARE for Animals Act of 2023.

The bill would amend the AWA, allowing the DOJ to bring civil action against violators. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) claims the bill’s introduction with bi-partisan support as one of its 2023 achievements. That is, if you can call a co-sponsor pool consisting of 172 Democrats and 18 Republicans truly bi-partisan.

Interestingly, on March 8, the USDA announced that it had worked with the DOJ and the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division on enforcement for almost four years. It has recently formalized the arrangement in a Memorandum of Understanding. Since then, only three more co-sponsors have added their names as co-sponsors for HR 5041. The bill has not made it out of committee yet. An identical bill, S 2555, has 26 Democratic, two Republican, and one independent co-sponsor. It has not made it out of committee either.

New Hampshire HB 1102-FN Update: The House Environment and Agriculture Committee tabled HB 1102-FN in a 232-140 vote, which caused it to miss a calendar deadline. Despite this setback, the bill’s language, which would make selling or breeding with the intent to sell two or more cats or dogs with a defect that causes suffering an act of animal cruelty, could still find its way into the legislative landscape. Potentially, it could be added to another bill by amendment, as happened with the 2019 pet vendor bill.