The new animal cruelty bill signed by President Trump makes animal cruelty a federal crime. To be perfectly clear, I understand completely that this is a good thing. Stopping animal abuse is a good thing. Making it a federal crime to abuse animals is a good thing.

However, I don't know how much it really solves the issue of animal cruelty.

As NPR summarized, "The Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act (PACT) is a bipartisan initiative that bans the intentional crushing, burning, drowning, suffocating, impalement or other serious harm to 'living non-human mammals, birds, reptiles, or amphibians.'"

But I have a serious question.

Will the PACT protect livestock? Chickens? Pigs? Cows?

Those are living, non-human mammals, who suffer serious harm every day, yet I highly doubt that the PACT will protect them. The animal industry would suffer greatly if suddenly people were to accuse them of federal crimes against these animals.

Animal cruelty in the animal industry is not uncommon. In early 2019, footage of the inside of a farm for Fairlife milk was released. Fairlife is supposedly a company that treats their cows with higher respect than other dairy farms do. This footage is a depiction of the way cows are treated throughout the dairy industry, not just at Fairlife's farms.

Chickens bred and produced for meat live horrible lives, often only living for six to seven weeks, when their legs are too weak to support their giant bodies genetically engineered to balloon to adult size while being, again, a mere six weeks old. They then die a painful death.

As Farm Sanctuary notes, "At the slaughterhouse, there is no law in place requiring chickens to be rendered unconscious before slaughter, and the electrified water bath stunning used has been shown to cause painful shocks before it stuns the birds."

That's not even my point, though, is it? We all know that the animal industry treats animals horribly. And, yes, the animals, most likely the family pets and the horses at the stable that are being abused can get some justice, but what about the creatures who exist solely for the purpose of human consumption?

Why does one animal get to have more value than another, simply because we consider one a commodity and another a furry friend?

Yet, this new law — which, again I know is a good thing — seems to neglect the other issues going on in our country and in the world that should have higher value than animals.

Immigrant children are dying in detention centers from the flu, they're sleeping on benches with mylar blankets after fleeing countries they didn't feel safe in, and there are doctors prepared to give them free vaccinations, yet their peaceful protest lands them in jail.

People are dying in Eastern Australia from bushland fires, where entire communities are being abandoned, homes destroyed, and the fires have been burning for over a month.

People are being killed at the grocery store.

People are being killed in their elementary school classrooms.

People are being killed in their high school classrooms.

People are being killed in their college classrooms.

Muslims are being detained in China in a modern-day Holocaust.

But, instead of really making any moves to address any of these much more serious, life-threatening detriments going on in our own country and around the world, we are going to imprison people who beat puppies.

Because that's what is most important right now.

Not the Uighurs, not the students, not the grocery shoppers, not the Australians, not the immigrant children — what is most important to the United States government today is animal abuse.

And that is not OK.