Relates to prohibiting school districts, school principals, administrators, or teachers from requiring, permitting, or conducting a lesson or experimental study using an animal in a hatching project.
NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF LEGISLATION submitted in accordance with Assembly Rule III, Sec 1(f)
BILL NUMBER: A58
SPONSOR: Rosenthal L TITLE OF BILL:
An act to amend the education law, in relation to animal hatching
projects
PURPOSE:
This bill will ban incubation projects or activities in New York State
schools.
SUMMARY OF SPECIFIC PROVISIONS:
Section one amends subdivision 5 of section 809 of the education law by
adding a new paragraph c.
Section two sets forth the effective date.
JUSTIFICATION:
Many primary school teachers use chick-hatching projects as a way to
teach their students about life cycles in the classroom. However,
schools do not have the proper resources to care for baby chicks during
or after the incubation phase.
During the incubation process, eggs may hatch on weekends when teachers
and administrators are not in school, effectively allowing a baby chick
to go unfed for a period of days once it is born. Heat lamps may also be
turned off over the weekend, which can cause chicks to die in their
shells or become immobile. In other instances, baby chicks die when eggs
in the incubator are constantly handled.
Schools rarely make accommodations to care for the surviving baby
chicks, many of which are born sick, once the on-hands experiment is
complete. Baby chicks are left in cardboard boxes without food or water,
they are given to overburdened shelters that do not have the capacity to
care for sick chicks and most are simply discarded. In an effort to
curtail the inhumane use of baby chicks, this bill would prohibit school
districts, school principals, administrators or teachers from utilizing
animals in hatching projects.
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
2017-18: A.6905 - Referred to Education
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:
None to the State.
EFFECTIVE DATE:
This act shall take effect immediately.
STATE OF NEW YORK
________________________________________________________________________
58
2019-2020 Regular Sessions
IN ASSEMBLY(Prefiled)
January 9, 2019
___________
Introduced by M. of A. L. ROSENTHAL -- read once and referred to the
Committee on Education
AN ACT to amend the education law, in relation to animal hatching
projects
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assem-bly, do enact as follows:
1 Section 1. Subdivision 5 of section 809 of the education law is
2 amended by adding a new paragraph c to read as follows:
3 c. No school district, school principal, administrator, or teacher
4 shall require, permit, or conduct a lesson or experimental study using
5 an animal in a hatching project in any such school or during any activ-
6 ity conducted under the auspices of such school whether or not the
7 activity takes place on the premises of such school.
8 § 2. This act shall take effect immediately.
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[] is old law to be omitted.
LBD01834-01-9
