Animals and the Law

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Law concerning cruelty to animals are controlled by state governments . Each state has its own Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. The only areas where the Commonwealth Government makes laws are such things as quarantine when bringing animals into Australia, or when exporting animals as in the live sheep and cattle trade or killing kangaroos for export.

Parts of the law -the Act

The law relating to animals in South Australia is made up of the Act and a set of Regulations. Cruelty to animals is an offence under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1985 , amended in November 1999. You can see a copy of this PCA Act online, supplied by the Australasian Legal Information Institute.

The Act sets out a general definition of what constitutes cruelty. It is quite a long document, but article 13 sums up the main definition:

  1. A person who ill treats an animal is guilty of an offence.

  2. Without limiting the generality of subsection (1), a person ill treats an animal if that person -

    1. deliberately or unreasonably causes the animal unnecessary pain;

    2. being the owner of the animal -

      1. fails to provide it with appropriate, and adequate, food, water, shelter or exercise;

      2. fails to take reasonable steps to alleviate any pain suffered by the animal (whether by reason of age, illness or injury);

      3. abandons the animal;

      4. neglects the animal so as to cause it pain;

    3. releases the animal from captivity for the purpose of it then being hunted or killed by another animal;

    4. causes the animal to be killed or injured by another animal;

    5. organizes, participates in, or is present at, an event at which the animal is encouraged to fight with another animal;

    6. having injured an animal (not being an animal of which that person is the owner) fails to take reasonable steps to alleviate any pain suffered by the animal;

    7. kills the animal is a manner that causes the animal unnecessary pain; or

    8. unless the animal is unconscious kills the animal by a method that does not cause death to occur as rapidly as possible; or

    9. ill treats the animal in any other manner prescribed by the regulations for the purposes of the section.



If a person is found guilty of ill-treating an animal according to section 13, the maximum penalty is a fine of $10,000 or 12 months imprisonment. However, if you examine the actual fines and sentences you'll see that they are much lower. In addition to fines or imprisonment, a person may be ordered to pay court costs, or to do a certain number of hours of community service. Under section 36 of the Act, a person may be ordered to surrender their animals to the RSPCA, and may be prohibited from owning any animals of a particular species in future. For examples of prosecutions, go to Court cases .

Parts of the law - the Regulations

Even more important than the PCA Act itself are the Regulations incorporated under this Act. The Regulations set out more specific conditions for the treatment of particular animals, for example, laying hens or animals during transport. You can see a copy of the Regulations online, again supplied by the Australasian Legal Information Institute.

Some Regulations incorporate what are called Model Codes of Practice for the Welfare of Animals . They are written at a national level, but it is up to each state whether or not they wish to incorporate these Codes into their laws.

In South Australia, the following national codes are incorporated into the Regulations, and therefore are legally enforceable:

In addition, there are 2 codes written in SA incorporated into the Regulations:

To summarise, the law relating to animals includes:

  1. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, and

  2. the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Regulations, some of which are Codes of Practice written at the national level.

Unfortunately, if there is a contradiction between the Act and the Codes of Practice, it is the Codes which prevail. For example, the Act states that animals must be provided with appropriate and adequate exercise, but the Code of Practice for the pig allows sows to be kept in pens barely larger than their bodies, where exercise is impossible. This extreme confinement is legal because of the Code of Practice. This is only one of many problems with the laws relating to animals.

Problems with legal protection

Although animals supposedly have legal protection against cruelty, a lot of animal suffering exists either because of the inadequate ways laws are drafted, or the inadequate way they are enforced.

These problems will be discussed under the following headings:

Omissions from the Act - fish

Under the Act, 'animal' is defined as any vertebrate, except humans and fish. In other words, it includes all animals with a backbone in the classes of mammal, bird, reptile and amphibian, but not fish .

There is no scientific reason for excluding fish; on the contrary, there is very strong scientific evidence that fish feel pain and fear in much the same way as mammals do. (For more details on this point, go to Animals in Sport and Entertainment and see the section of fishing.)

Nevertheless, at present fish have no legal protection whatsoever. For example:


All these actions are cruel because they cause great pain and fear, but the law does not protect fish. According to sub-section 13(2d) of the Act, live baiting would be illegal if done to any other vertebrate because a person is causing one animal to be killed or injured by another. The cruelty of live baiting is well illustrated in this description from "The Australian Magazine" (16/2/1991, p9):
" Kept alive by having salt water pumped through their gills, they have hooks stitched to the top of their heads by means of a sack needle passed through the eye socket. Then, with mouths sewn shut, they are towed behind the boats at a steady five knots. Sometimes they stay alive all day. If they begin to skitter in panic across the surface, observers know that something big is closing in. "

In spite of the pain and panic, this activity is legal because fish are excluded from the Act.

Failure to apply the Act - duck shooting

Although duck shooting is still legal, it inevitably results in cruelty and breaches of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. According to section 13(2g) of the Act, it is an offence to kill an animal in a manner which causes unnecessary pain. Section 13(2a) of the Act states that it is an offence to unreasonably cause unnecessary pain. (Go to our section Ducks for detailed evidence of the cruelty involved in this so-called sport.)

Thousands of ducks each year are not killed instantly when hit by one or more of the over 100 pellets fired with each shotgun blast. There are then several possible scenarios:

CSIRO and National Parks and Wildlife Service have X-rayed thousands of ducks caught in the wild before duck season . Depending on the species of duck, between 10% and 15% of all birds have shotgun pellets embedded in their flesh from previous shoots. Bearing in mind that many injured ducks were either killed by shooters or died of their wounds, this figure of 10% to 15% surviving with pellets shows that vast numbers of ducks are wounded and suffer unnecessary pain as a result of duck shooting.

When ducks are wounded and subsequently die or are killed, section 13(2g) of the Act is breached, because an animal is being killed in a manner that causes unnecessary pain. When a duck is only wounded, section 13(2a) is breached, because the shooter is unreasonably causing unnecessary pain. However, no-one is ever charged with cruelty during duck shooting; breaches of the Act are conveniently neglected while this cruel "sport" continues to be legal.

Failure to apply the Code - laboratory animals

Specific guidelines covering animals in laboratories are contained in the Australian code of practice for the care and use of animals for scientific purposes. Any proposal to use animals for research or teaching has to be submitted to an Animal Experimentation Ethics Committee, which is supposed to ensure that the proposal meets the requirements of the code of practice.

For more details about Ethics Committees, go to Animals in Laboratories and look at the section on Laboratories and the Law. You can download (in pdf format) a copy of the Code of Practice from the NHMRC site .

The Code of Practice gives the impression that only really important projects are allowed to go ahead, and there are definitely no alternatives to animals in these projects. Unfortunately this is not the reality.

The following are some general requirements of the Code:

1.1 Scientific and teaching activities using animals may be performed only when they are essential to:

1.2 Studies using animals may be performed only after a decision has been made that they are justified, weighing the scientific or educational value of the study against the potential effects on the welfare of the animals.

1.9 Techniques which replace or complement the use of animals in scientific and teaching activities must be sought and used wherever possible.

7.1.1 Animals are to be used for teaching activities only when there are no suitable alternatives for achieving the educational objectives.

According to these guidelines, Ethics Committees should be asking:

Although these questions are required by the Code of Practice, they are rarely asked. For example, at the University of NSW hundreds upon hundreds of rats have suffered electric shocks to the feet in studies of the fear that this treatment produces. These studies have neither practical value, nor do they produce significant information. At the University of Sydney rats who have restricted access to food and a running wheel will exercise so much that they lose weight, to the point of death unless the experiment is stopped. The researchers admit this so-called Exercise Induced Anorexia is not a model for human anorexia, and again it doesn't provide significant information.

In South Australia in 1997 the media highlighted an experiment going on at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, involving the native Australian fat-tailed dunnart, whose tail contains 25% of total body fat. As part of the experiment, the researchers cut off this tail and analysed the fat distribution in the body when the animals were decapitated after 45 days. Not surprisingly, body fat stores increased in the amputated animals, although their food intake didn't increase. The researcher defended the experiment by claiming he was studying why it was hard for obese people to keep weight off ( Sydney Morning Herald 26/3/97). However, the dunnart is a tiny nocturnal animal, weighing only 10-20 grams, which eats insects and can go into torpor if necessary, not exactly similar to a human. The obvious way to study the response to removal of fat is to follow the progress of humans after liposuction.

Doctors from the US Medical Research Modernization Committee made criticisms of this research, such as:

In spite of criticisms such as these, the Ethics Committee approved the project. (For more information about this research, go to Dunnarts as models for humans?

Part of the problem is that Ethics Committees often have a large number of proposals to go through, and don't have enough time to consider the value of each one. Another problem for researchers on Ethics Committees is that if they judge another researcher's proposal to be worthless, their own research might be criticised in return. There is a strong assumption that all research is useful and worth doing, but this is not the case, especially not when it causes harm to animals . This is also not what the Code of Practice intends.

Clear examples of available alternatives not being used occur in the area of teaching. It is unbelievable that Ethics Committees are still approving animals for dissection when there are so many alternatives that are demonstrably at least as good. The same applies in many other areas of teaching - for more information on this point go to Animals in Laboratories and look at the sections on Dissection and Animals in Tertiary Teaching. In spite of this evidence, Ethics Committees continue to approve animals for teaching merely on the say-so of teachers, without asking for evidence that they are necessary or that there are no alternatives.

Another example of alternatives not being used highlights many of the problems in this area. For several years Animal Liberation tried to stop the use of mice to produce monoclonal antibodies. This painful procedure was banned in several European countries in the early 1990s because there is a good alternative method. However, Ethics Committees in Australia continued to approve the use of mice. (For more details about this procedure, go to Animals in Laboratories and look at the section on Laboratories and the Law).

Researchers confidently asserted that the new alternatives didn't work, but made criticisms only relevant to a method developed in 1975 ! It was clear that they had made no effort to keep up with new technologies. Fortunately NH&MRC has now stepped in and proposed that it is no longer acceptable for Ethics Committees to approve the use of mice for this purpose.

Both the antibody and the teaching examples show that:

  1. non-specialists on Ethics Committees don't have the required knowledge about alternatives;

  2. many researchers and teachers have little motivation to keep up to date on alternatives to animals and to learn new techniques to replace the animal methods they have used for years and years.

These factors result in the Code of Practice not being implemented.

The Code of Practice also sets out guidelines for housing laboratory animals. For example:
4.4.22 Animal accommodation should be designed and managed to meet species-specific needs. Pens, cages and containers should be constructed and maintained to ensure the comfort and well-being of the animals. The following factors should be taken into account:
(i) species-specific behavioural requirements, including the availability and design of space to enable free movement and activity, sleeping, privacy and comfort with others of the same species;"

One of the most distressing sights in an animal house is to see large white rabbits by themselves in a bare wire cage only slightly larger than their body. How does such a cage provide for comfort, free movement, species-specific behavioural requirements, etc? Yet they still exist, in spite of the Code of Practice.

Unfortunately the reasonable-sounding guidelines of the Code of Practice are not always implemented.

Codes of Practice overrule the Act - pigs and poultry

There are major contradictions between the Codes and Article 13 of the Act, and when there is a contradiction it is the Code of Practice not the Act which prevails. As Article 43 of the Act states:
" Nothing in this Act renders unlawful anything done in accordance with a prescribed code of practice relating to animals.

So, if the Act says that it is an offence to fail to provide adequate exercise, but the Codes of Practice say it is acceptable to keep pigs and poultry in confined spaces where exercise is impossible, then it is legal to keep pigs and poultry in confined spaces. Although section 13(2b) of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act refers to the need for adequate and appropriate exercise, the Codes of Practice allow pigs and poultry to be kept permanently in the following conditions:

Abnormal behaviour and increased levels of lameness and bone problems show that this confinement and lack of exercise cause suffering. (For more detailed information on these points, go to Animals on Farms .) So, if you happen to be a dog, the law makes sure that you receive adequate exercise, but if you're unlucky enough to be a pig or a fowl you don't have this luxury because the Codes of Practice override the protection offered by the Act.

To download (in pdf format) copies of the Codes of Practice relating to farm animals, go to the Department of Primary Industries and Energy .

Other inconsistencies

Farm animals and any animal labeled a "pest" are particularly poorly protected by the law. For example:

The fact is that dogs and cats (pets) are fairly well covered by the law, but other animals are not nearly so well served. Human profit and convenience are placed before the prevention of cruelty.

Enforcement of the law

Charges of cruelty to an animal can only be laid by an Inspector under the Act. All police officers are automatically Inspectors, while others are appointed by the Minister responsible for animal welfare on the recommendation of the RSPCA. Some, but not all Inspectors are employees of the RSPCA. While police sometimes investigate cases in the country, they generally prefer to leave this area to the RSPCA.

The problem is that the RSPCA is a charity, running an animal shelter and a marine rescue centre. It is a large financial burden to also have to employ Inspectors to gather evidence, and to meet costs associated with court cases. Imagine if a charity caring for abused children also had to prosecute the abusers, or if a charity helping road accident victims also had to prosecute drunk and negligent drivers. It doesn't make sense, yet this is the case with animal cruelty. Crimes against animals should be prosecuted in the same way as crimes against humans .

Part of the problem is that the RSPCA only has 8 full-time Inspectors in the whole of South Australia, although there are also a number of honorary (unpaid) Inspectors as well. This shortage of Inspectors limits the number and type of inspections that can be carried out. The RSPCA tends to focus on straight-forward breaches of the law by individuals, such as someone not feeding their dog or horse properly, or someone conducting dog or cock fights. What the RSPCA hasn't done is systematically inspect businesses where large numbers of animals are kept, such as pig or poultry sheds.

The Senate Select Committee on Animal Welfare in its 1990 report Intensive Livestock Production pointed out this problem of inadequate inspection. It recommended that more inspections should be made of pig and poultry sheds to ensure that they complied with the relevant Codes of Practice (sections 5.50 and 11.79). Regarding the transport of poultry, for example, the report commented:
" The Committee believes that sufficient resources should be provided to ensure that the provisions of the Code are enforced and recommends that additional manpower resources be provided to each State and Territory Department of Agriculture to ensure compliance with the provisions of the Code of Practice for road transport of poultry ". (section 8.16)

The same point is relevant to the RSPCA - it needs more inspectors to be able to do its job properly, and to ensure that all persons dealing with animals, including big businesses, adhere to the law.

There is also a problem of accountability when a private charity enforces a public law. For example, if I am unhappy about treatment I have received from a police officer or the way that officer carried out his/her job, there is an official channel for complaints. Such complaints will be investigated by the Police Complaints Authority and the person complaining will receive a written report. In contrast, if I make a complaint about cruelty to animals, unless it goes to court and appears on the public record in that way, I have no way of knowing how the RSPCA acted on my complaint. I have no way of knowing how my complaint was investigated and what action, if any, was taken. If I make complaints to government authorities, on the other hand, I can use Freedom or Information legislation to get relevant documents or make a complaint to the ombudsman if I am not satisfied. These channels are not available in the case of the RSPCA. So, a whole area of the law (cruelty to animals) is not open to public scrutiny because it is being enforced by a private charity.

If the State government is serious about enforcing its own Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, then it must make available sufficient funds to employ more inspectors. It must also take on the responsibility of prosecuting people charged with cruelty, because a charity can't be expected to take on major court cases, which can be drawn-out and costly. It must improve processes of accountability in enforcing the law relating to animals.