6 J Maher et al defining animal abuse and by the absence of reliable research and appropriate remedies Moreover, while recent attention to animal abuse has raised awareness and concern about its impact on humans, its effects on animals have received far less attention Thinking about animal abuse requires one to begin with and confront century-old issues in criminology about whether crime or harm should be the focus of study (criminology versus zemiology, that is) For our purposes, it matters little whether animal abuse is legal or illegal, intentional or unintentional, commonplace or infrequent, committed one-on-one or in large-scale institutions However defined, all forms of animal abuse should be opened up for nonspeciesist scrutiny This broader and deeper vision has already happened with other major forms of interpersonal and institutional violence such as sexism, racism and ageism Criminology may have arrived late at the scene But, as this book shows, it has arrived The Contents of This Book This book was designed to fill three needs: (1) the need for an inclusive resource which would introduce the key concepts and issues in animal abuse studies; (2) the need for a research-based volume which would invite scholars, students and practitioners to think about a comprehensive range of animal abuse scenarios; and (3) the need for a useful platform for scholars of animal abuse to raise awareness of their own areas of expertise The central theme of the book is the use and abuse of animals The wide range of human-animal relationships examined in the following 22 chapters include animals who live in close proximity to us (those whom we have domesticated and who live in our homes or those who are raised on farms and whom we slaughter as edibles); those animals collected and destroyed in ‘the wild’; those animals whom we enlist as items of entertainment and sport; those animals sacrificed on the scientific altars of human health, human knowledge and human happiness; and those animals used and abused by political and military elites for our protection and by national and local states who decide certain animals are unwanted, dangerous, surplus to demand and otherwise expendable While we wish to consider animal abuse in its broadest sense and we recognise that all animal species are adversely affected by commonplace human behaviour, there is, inevitably, some bias in the Handbook’s chapters in respect of what species are represented and what are ignored There is a