Cockfighting: Organized Animal Abuse & American Apathy

Cockfighting: Organized Animal Abuse & American Apathy

18/July/09 -- In Harwinton, Ct, 357 fighting roosters were confiscated in Connecticut one week ago and are now being held at an undisclosed location. According to law enforcement and Department of Agriculture officials, all of the English fighting cocks or Old English game birds, including several chicks, will be humanely euthanized due to disease and parasites.

Cockfighting, which is particularly popular among Hispanics from the Caribbean and Latin America, has flourished in American cities over the past 30 years. Fights that typically draw crowds of about 100, and where there is heavy betting on matches, usually take place in abandoned buildings or large garages. (At one match officials raided in 2003, according to the New York ASPCA, officers arrested 137 participants, seized 38 birds and $40,000 in cash.) Roosters naturally fight over territory and hens, but rarely draw blood unless heavily drugged and trained by handlers. Birds that fail to grow sufficiently sharp leg talons have them surgically removed, to be replaced by artificial plastic or metal spurs. Pecked-out eyes, lacerated head combs and broken wings are telltale injuries, and many roosters fight to the death.

On the day the flock was seized, the state agriculture department spent $3,000 just in overtime. Blood tests conducted on a sample of 30 birds indicate that most of the flock is infected with a bacterium that causes tendinitis and bursitis, which is communicable to other birds, and will force the state to keep the Harwinton flock isolated before it is destroyed to prevent contamination of other poultry. The cost of feed and bedding, constant daytime care by Dodge and a crew of volunteers, and then a complete disinfecting of the site will add thousands more to the state's bill.

Diane Dodge, the animal control officer for Harwinton, was feeding and cleaning out cages as the bedding dust billows up in clouds. Dodge was told that she would have to remove what the police believed would be "50 or 60" aggressive and almost certainly diseased roosters, which would have to be cared for and maintained while the police inspected the flock and prepared a case against the family arrested and charged for these birds.

Dodge, who will be feeding the flock with her volunteers, says, "I hope I never have to do this again," taking a break from her evening feeding of the birds. "I may give up chicken for the rest of my life. I'd always thought that I'd seen everything as an animal control officer, but that was before last Thursday."

State police Sgt. Gregory Kenney of Troop L in Litchfield, who is supervising the investigation, says that he and his investigators have had to "come up to speed very fast" on cockfighting. On Wednesday, they were assisted in their investigation by a visit from a national expert on cockfighting, New York ASPCA special investigator Mark MacDonald. His preliminary investigation, Kenney says, indicates that the people charged with breeding and housing these animals for fighting were probably managing a large boarding, breeding and training operation that may have served cockfights in several neighboring states.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has reported that breeding gamecocks for fighting purposes is an $18 million-a-year industry in that state; while nationwide it is a big and profitable business, despite the fact that these avian battles are banned in every state but Louisiana and parts of New Mexico.

But limp penalties leave police, sheriffs and prosecutors reluctant to invest the time and personnel to enforce anti-cockfighting laws. According to the Humane Society, a federal law, which took effect May, 2003, tripled the fine to $15,000 with up to one year in jail for anyone shipping gamefowl across state lines for fighting purposes, or exporting them to countries where it is legal.

Compare this situation to the scenario of the Michael VickMichael Vick dog-fighting scandal.

In late April of 2007, authorities raided Vick’s house in Surry County, Va., found -- among other things -- 66 dogs (most of whom were pit bulls), a dog-fighting pit, bloodstained carpets, and equipment commonly associated with dog-fighting.

Mr. Vick was sentenced to 23 months in prison, three years probation, and a $5,000 fine.

In the U.S., dog-fighting is considered a felony in every state except Wyoming and Idaho. Despite that fact, according to The Humane Society, it's estimated that somewhere between 20,000-40,000 people in this country take part in this multibillion-dollar industry.

American pit bull terriers account for 99 percent of the species involved in dog-fighting, and a pit bull puppy can cost as much as $5,000. An average dog fight carries a $10,000 purse, with some going as high as $100,000.

Statistics from animal shelters give another indicator of the rise in dog-fighting, according to an article found on CNN.com. Fifteen years ago, 2 to 3 percent of the dogs coming into animal shelters were pit bulls; now, pit bulls make up about a third. At one shelter in Jersey City, New Jersey, says the article, the figure is 65 percent, with 20 percent of them showing the scars that indicate they have been fighting dogs.

A database run by animal advocacy group Pet-abuse.com, which collects reports of animal abuse, shows reports of dog-fighting cases increased from 16 in 2000 to 127 in 2006. The group has found 74 cases reported so far this year.

Dogfighting is illegal in all 50 states. It's a misdemeanor in Idaho and Wyoming, and a felony everywhere else. But in some states where dog-fighting is a felony, it's still perfectly legal to own a fighting dog or be a spectator at a dogfight.

A bill signed by President BushPresident Bush in May, 2007, made the federal law against dog-fighting tougher, by strengthening some penalties to felony level. The law bans interstate commerce, import and export related to animal fighting activities. Violators can now be sentenced to three years in jail and a $250,000 fine. Previously the maximum sentence was a year in jail.

Now consider two very distinct differences between dogs and cocks: 1)according to a USDA.gov website, Chicken consumption more than doubled between 1970 and 2004, from 27.4 pounds per person to 59.2 pounds (boneless, edible weight). Chicken consumption continues gaining ground on beef, the current leading meat.

And: 2) the American Veterinarian Medicine website, avma.org, estimates that, as of 2007, there were over 43 million households who own one or more dogs, with over 72 million dogs in the lower 48 (the larger figure includes the animals held in shelter and kennels, as well as a rough estimation of all loose strays, so this number could be higher still).

Conclusion: through that sometimes bizarre maze referred to as the human mind, we so love our dogs here in the United States that there are far more dogs than there are owners.

Whereas we eat chicken, to the amount of an average of over a pound a day; no, we don’t eat the male of the species, but doesn’t mean we hold them in any higher regard because of that fact.

Even in our social imagery of the two animals we hold the cock/hen in lower esteem, so much so that we grant higher respect to dogs even when we employ the word as a pejorative. To call someone a dog is to accuse that person anything from a subservient follower, a treacherous double-dealer, to a being ruthlessly lustful.

To be called a chicken is much simpler, you are a coward or fearful of taking risks (as an interesting aside, in France, the police are given the denigrating name of ‘le pollet’ which is of course chicken, unlike in the US where police are tarred as being ‘pigs’); if you’re male and called a ‘rooster’ then you are a small-but-feisty contender, a sharp-eyed and over-avid fighter.

This “respect gap” is even more pronounced when one considers the disparity between the intensity of punishment: a fine of $15,000 with up to one year in jail at most verses three years in jail and a $250,000 fine.

Then there is the more subtle aspect of crime and criminality, the threshold of misbehavior which brings the attention of the authorities: in the two cases cited above, police raided Mr. Vick’s Virginia properties for 66 dogs, whereas the Harwinton police netted more than five times that number of fowl; the Vick ring was estimated to gross perhaps a half million dollars a year in the six years of operation, as opposed to the Harwinton gang who took in over probably half that amount year for a decade or longer.

Clearly, running a cockfighting ring is less likely to attract unwanted attention, nor bring down as harsh a set of penalties as the laws will for dogfighting.

The point of this article is to direct the reader to the unpleasant but inescapable fact that America puts out much more effort to punish the people who runs dog fights than the operators of cock fights.

The article from the Hartford Courant that detailed the Harwinton raid went on for five paragraphs about how much money it would cost Connecticut police and animal control offices, as documented above.

This writer searched but could not locate any article detailing the Vick raid wherein the cost to state and federal officials was considered important enough to include.

Frankly speaking, the culture of America too often prioritizes its sympathy for animal abuse: abuse of dogs is sought out and punished, but abuse of fighting birds, not so much.

Abuse is abuse, and especially despicable when the victims of the abuse are dumb, defenseless animals -- any animals.

The point of this article is NOT to advocate for yet another spate of mindlessly self-righteous, gratuitously authoritarian “nanny laws” that try to legislate morality (while in truth only serving to further some vote-hungry politicians urge to hoist the banner of pretend outrage before the gullible public), drawing away the time and resources of law enforcement officials from more important felonies.

Changing the atavistic urge to be the spectator of cruel blood sports will require a literal sea change in social attitudes; that is the kind of change that takes generations to achieve, not a couple of years, nor even several.

No, instead, this article puts forth the argument that the punishment portions of the laws prohibiting such abuse should be brought into parity. In other words, the punishments for conducting cockfighting should be as heavy as the ones for dogfighting.

It will at least be a reasonable beginning to halting this kind of abuse; the next step is of the grassroots variety, which is the task of others – hopefully, many others.