Under development · The Museum of Friendly Beasts is open while new galleries are added
✿ Lambythe Museum of Friendly Beasts
Kind or cruel? · room 2 of 7 · 1822 to 2025

From Martin's Act to the PACT Act

Two hundred years of laws and the people who pushed them, from a London coffee house to Florida's Trooper's Law.

Photo: P. Mathews, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Can they suffer?From Martin's Act to the PACT ActWho speaks for animals?Hard places: farm, ring, tank, lab, wildThe price of kindness, and the linkWhat you can doBeing kind to animals
1822

Martin's Act

history

Britain's Parliament passed the first national law against cruelty to farm animals, pushed by the Irish member Richard Martin, nicknamed 'Humanity Dick'. It protected cattle, horses, sheep and other livestock from being beaten or ill-treated. Dogs and cats were added in 1835, the same law that banned bear-baiting and cockfighting in England.

A famous early case had a beaten donkey brought into court as the evidence.

Sources: Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act 1822; RSPCA, Our history
Photo: Simon van de Passe, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
1824

A society in a coffee house

history

Two years later, Martin and the minister Arthur Broome founded the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals at a London coffee house. It hired inspectors to bring cases under the new law. Queen Victoria gave it the title 'Royal' in 1840, and the RSPCA is still at work today.

Why might a law need a private society to enforce it?

Sources: RSPCA, Our history
Photo: P. Mathews, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
1866

Henry Bergh and the ASPCA

history

Henry Bergh, a New York diplomat who had seen a carriage driver beat his horse in Russia, founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in April 1866, and New York passed an anti-cruelty law that same month. Bergh stopped drivers on city streets himself. In 1874 he helped a girl named Mary Ellen Wilson, and her case led to the first society to protect children.

Animal protection and child protection grew up side by side.

Sources: ASPCA, History of the ASPCA; Henry Bergh
Photo: Miscellaneous Items in High Demand, PPOC, Library of Congress, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
1873

The Twenty-Eight Hour Law

historytrade & commercialization

When cattle began riding trains from the plains to city stockyards, Congress ruled that animals in transport must be unloaded for food, water and rest at least every 28 hours. The law now covers trucks too. Poultry is not covered, which animal groups have challenged.

An early federal welfare law, written because of a new transport technology.

Sources: 49 U.S.C. 80502 (Cornell LII)
Photo: Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
1877

A horse tells its story

history

Anna Sewell's novel Black Beauty is told by a horse, who describes kind and cruel owners and the tight 'bearing rein' that held horses' heads high for fashion. Animal-welfare groups in America printed and gave away huge numbers of copies, and the bearing rein fell out of use.

Can a story change a law? Read it free and decide.

Sources: Black Beauty, Project Gutenberg
Photo: Black_Beauty_(1877).djvu: Anna Sewell derivative work: Theornamentalist, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
1958

The Humane Slaughter Act

historyeconomics

This federal law requires that cattle, pigs, sheep and other livestock be made unconscious before slaughter, usually by stunning. Religious slaughter methods are allowed under their own rules. Chickens and turkeys, the great majority of farm animals killed for food, are not covered by the act.

Who decides which animals a law includes? Count how many are left out.

Sources: 7 U.S.C. 1901 (Cornell LII); Humane Slaughter Act
Photo: H. Zell, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
1966

The Animal Welfare Act

historytrade & commercialization

Magazine stories about stolen pets sold to laboratories helped pass the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act of 1966. Renamed the Animal Welfare Act, it now sets care standards for animals used in research, sold by commercial dealers and breeders, and shown by exhibitors such as zoos and circuses. The U.S. Department of Agriculture licenses and inspects them. Farm animals raised for food, and rats, mice and birds bred for research, are not covered.

The puppy-mill and roadside-zoo debates today are fights over how this law is enforced.

Sources: USDA APHIS, Animal Welfare Act; Animal Welfare Act of 1966
Photo: Ximonic (Simo Räsänen), CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
2019

The PACT Act: a federal felony

history

The Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act, signed on November 25, 2019, made the worst intentional cruelty to animals a federal crime with up to seven years in prison, when it crosses state lines or happens on federal land. Before it, cruelty was mostly a state matter. Every state now treats some animal cruelty as a felony.

Why might Congress act when every state already has a law?

Sources: H.R. 724, 116th Congress (Congress.gov)
Photo: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Fla. Stat. 828.12

Florida's cruelty law

history

In Florida, causing an animal needless suffering, or failing to give it food, water or shelter, is animal cruelty, a first-degree misdemeanor. Torturing or killing an animal with intent to cause pain is aggravated cruelty, a third-degree felony. Ponce's Law (2018), named for a Labrador puppy, lets a judge bar a convicted person from owning animals and made prison more likely for the worst cases.

Read the statute itself: what words decide whether an act is a crime?

Sources: Florida Statutes 828.12 (2025); Ponce's Law, SB 952 (2018), Florida Senate
Photo: Alvesgaspar (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
2025

Florida in 2025: Trooper's Law and Dexter's Law

history

Before Hurricane Milton in 2024, a dog was found tied to a pole beside I-75 as floodwater rose; troopers rescued him and named him Trooper. Trooper's Law (SB 150, signed May 2025) makes it a felony to leave a dog tied or penned outside during a natural disaster. Dexter's Law (HB 255) raised penalties for torturing a pet and told the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to post a public list of people convicted of animal cruelty.

A Florida law written after a Florida storm. Does your family's hurricane plan include its animals?

Sources: Observer: New Florida animal cruelty laws (June 2025); Florida Senate, SB 150 (2025); Florida Senate, HB 255 (2025)
Photo: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Go deeper

Lessons: The Domesticated Animal: Now, today (3)Preview The Domesticated Animal: Now, today (6-8)Preview Liberty and Its Rivals: Two bills of rightsPreview

Drawer: Friendly Beasts: Kind or cruel?

Supplement: Black Beauty (1877), free at Project Gutenberg

Room quiz

Check yourself · grades 3-12

Room quiz

6 questions, counted live. Pick an answer to see whether it is right and why. Nothing is saved.

1. The first national law against cruelty to farm animals was passed in 1822 in...
Martin's Act, pushed by Richard Martin.
2. Henry Bergh founded the ASPCA in...
April 1866, in New York.
3. The Twenty-Eight Hour Law is about...
Animals moved by rail or truck must be rested, fed and watered at least every 28 hours.
4. Which animals are NOT covered by the Humane Slaughter Act?
Poultry, most of the animals killed for food, are left out.
5. The PACT Act of 2019 made the worst intentional cruelty to animals...
Up to seven years in federal prison.
6. Florida's Trooper's Law makes it a felony to...
Named for a dog rescued beside I-75 before Hurricane Milton.
← Can they suffer?QR code REC7H8REC7H8Who speaks for animals? →