A bill that would make malicious acts of animal cruelty a federal felony was unanimously passed in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday.

The bipartisan Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act gives federal authorities a new set of tools to hunt down suspected animal abusers who move across state lines. The bill expands on a prior law that outlawed the creation and distribution of animal abuse videos that are “obscene” in nature but didn’t expressly prohibit violence toward animals. The PACT Act intends to close that loophole.

The bill was introduced by Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) and Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) In February, a bipartisan group of senators introduced the Senate companion to the bill.

According to a fact sheet from Deutch’s office, the law would make it a serious federal crime for “any person to intentionally engage” in the “crushing, burning, drowning, suffocating [and] impaling” of animals, along with any other acts of intentional animal cruelty toward non-human mammals, birds, reptiles or amphibians....