Some legal aspects of protecting animals from cruelty

The article is devoted to highlighting the improvement of legislation on the protection of animals from cruelty. It has been established that the treatment of animals is based on the following principles: cruel treatment of animals is incompatible with the requirements of morality and humanity, causes moral harm to humans. Recognizing certain natural rights for animals, society, thus, cares not so much about the protection of nature or ecology, but rather demonstrates high moral and cultural values, characterized by respect for life as such, especially for biological forms that have a developed nervous system, and therefore are able to feel pain, hunger, thirst, etc. Thus, by establishing responsibility for cruel treatment of animals, society seeks to protect animals from suffering, and suffering is an ethical and psychological category closely related to morality. Therefore, by committing an administrative offense in the form of animal cruelty, a person violates administrative relations not in the field of nature protection, but in the field of public morality protection, since he neglects generally accepted ethical norms and rules that have developed in society, contributes to the spread of violence and cruelty. The emphasis is on lowering the age of administrative responsibility for animal cruelty, we proceed from the fact that at the age of 16 a person is already old enough to realize the danger of his behavior. Hence, if a teenager realizes that an animal suffers from his actions, that it cannot resist, cannot seek protection from the relevant law enforcement agencies, then he is psychologically mature enough to understand the purpose of the administrative liability measures applied to him. Moreover, administrative punishment does not entail a criminal record or any serious restrictions and deprivations and is mainly educational and preventive in nature. It is worth noting that in foreign countries there is a corresponding experience, in particular, according to the legislation of European countries, liability for animal cruelty is provided for from the age of 14. In addition, a debatable issue is to determine legal entities as subjects of administrative liability for animal cruelty with the subsequent definition of the specifics of the conditions of their liability. After all, the current legislation of Ukraine provides only general grounds for the statement about the possibility of bringing legal entities to administrative liability for cruel acts against animals.