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It has almost everything to do with the pain and suffering caused to the animal.

Based on?

Common sense? Animals feel pain. For that reason, our culture creates and enforces laws that discourage humans from treating animals in a non-humane fashion.

And a person beaten to death is just as dead as the 80-year old that passes a way in their sleep. The ends do not justify the means.

Nice strawman, but you know darn well there's a difference between dying, and dying at the hands of another.

My whole point (and it's not a strawman). The means of killing/dying are what defines the action involved as bad or good. It's the difference between an animal being killed for a "good" reason (to create food and other products) and in a fashion that meets local and federal regulations vs. being killed for no good reason and in a non-humane fashion.

Our culture and society has made a conscious decision to encourage humane treatment of animals and discourage non-humane treatment of animals. It also has chosen to divide how we view animals based on their value to us. So you have livestock vs. vermin vs. pets.

Disclaimer: despite my arguments, I do not think that "torturing Fido" makes for a better world, so please don't construe my response as seeking to make THAT case.

My whole point (and it's not a strawman). The means of killing/dying are what defines the action involved as bad or good. It's the difference between an animal being killed for a "good" reason (to create food and other products) and in a fashion that meets local and federal regulations vs. being killed for no good reason and in a non-humane fashion.

"Good reason" is awfully subjective, and great subjectivity often helps to make for bad law. Sportsmen often kill fish and deer for the "sport" of it - and they are currently at the front lines of the "animal cruelty" arguments. I'm pessimistic enough to believe it won't stop there - I wish I could share your optimism, but I think the criminalization of animal cruelty is a slippery slope, much as drug criminalization has been a slippery slope at times. I guess I'm too libertarian to trust that prohibition of undesirable acts is always the best solution.

Besides, you're not really talking about the _means_ of killing (as you said above) but the _motive_. If I slit a dog's throat and let it bleed, even if I'm on a farm, I will probably be charged with animal cruelty, according to what I see in the news - since it'll be hard for someone to come up with a "good" reason. If I slit a hog's throat, while on the same farm, nobody (ecept PETA) will bat an eyelash.

(As an aside - what if the people killing your bacon actually take sick PLEASURE in killing the hog? Should THEY be charged?)

Our culture and society has made a conscious decision to encourage humane treatment of animals and discourage non-humane treatment of animals.

Yes, but I wouldn't hang my hat completely on what "our culture and society" has decided should be legislated, since that encompasses a NUMBER of issues which divide conservatives and liberals (and libertarians).

It also has chosen to divide how we view animals based on their value to us. So you have livestock vs. vermin vs. pets.

So, am I just to pipe down, and preserve "the settled law of the land"? I certainly HOPE not.

Look, before we spiral off into disagreement, I think animal cruelty is reprehensible - but I don't think that EVERYTHING that is reprehensible should be illegal. I tend to draw that line when it has a direct impact on another human being.

I actually think in THIS case, you might even go so far to make a charge of "terroristic threatening", since a good prosecutor could probably make a reasonable case the the child feared for his OWN safety in such a circumstance. I just think that, from a legal standpoint, it's better to treat animals as property, and leave the discouragement of more EMOTIONAL forms of animal killing to other forms of societal pressure. Sadly, things like shame, scorn, shunning, etc. have become rather passé in our current world - they used to be quite effective.