Israel Criminalizes Animal Cruelty and Closes Slaughterhouse

This week, Israel’s Ministerial Committee on Legislation approved several amendments to an existing law that will further protect animals in the Middle Eastern country. With the new changes to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Law, human guardians will have greater responsibility to ensure the health of their companion animals, and animal negligence and abuse is now a criminal violation that can result in jail time. In addition, it is now possible to prosecute companies which are responsible for animals, which means the meat industry is liable for their treatment of animals. Also this week, the Ministry of Agriculture ordered the shutdown of the Dabbah slaughterhouse—the nation’s largest with 120,000 animals slaughtered every year—after an investigative report documenting systematic mistreatment of animals was shown on the news.