Animal Fighting Is The Pits
We’re working to enforce our laws against animal fighting and to tighten the laws where needed so that animal fighting does not continue and cause suffering to roosters and dogs conscripted into these bloody battles.
Animal Wellness investigation exposes more than 500 illegal transports of nearly 9,000 fighting birds from the U.S. to customers on Guam.
Animal Wellness Action and Animal Wellness Foundation broke an investigation exposing that cockfighters made more than 500 illegal transports of fighting birds from the U.S. to customers on Guam. That's nearly 9,000 birds to Guam alone in the last three years! We have demanded that the Guam Agriculture Director stop blessing these illegal shipments. Transporting fighting animals across state lines is a felony. Please sign the petition to Attorney General William Pelham Barr to promote federal enforcement of the national law against dogfighting and cockfighting.
Passing local ordinances to forbid people from owning large numbers of roosters.
The Animal Wellness Foundation worked in 2018 and 2019 to pass an anti-cockfighting ordinances in Los Angeles County and Ventura County, which together almost certainly had thousands of backyard cockfighting operations (a raid in 2018 in the northern part of L.A. county, close to Ventura County, revealed a cockfighting stable, with nearly 8,000 birds).
We are now working on a similar ordinance in Orange County and turning our attention to Kern County and all other counties that do not have these ordinances.
This is an enforcement issue. Only 12 counties have limits on keeping roosters (Los Angeles, Merced, Monterey, Napa, Riverside, San Benito, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Joaquin, Santa Clara, Solano, and Ventura), so that means our campaign will work to get the other 46 counties into the column where cockfighting is restricted. Yes, we have state and federal laws against animal fighting, but the best way to prevent cockfighters from operating is to forbid them from having large numbers of roosters.
Animal Wellness Foundation and Animal Wellness Action led the effort to pass a federal law that bans animal fighting everywhere in the United States, including in the U.S. territories (Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Marianas Islands).
In November 2019, a U.S. District Court in Puerto Rico affirmed that the law does ban cockfighting in all five U.S. territories, none of which have enacted territorial bans on the blood sport. There are 71 cockfighting arenas operating in Puerto Rico alone, and there are dozens in the other territories. That means that the new federal law we helped to engineer is one of the most consequential animal protection laws passed in recent decades. The federal animal fighting law took full effect on December 20th, and the territories are obligated under the law to stop raising tens of thousands of fighting birds and shutter dozens of fighting arenas.
Our Animal Wellness National Law Enforcement Council will assist prosecutors throughout the nation in bringing cases forward where there are obvious violations of local, state, and federal laws.
Our Animal Wellness NLEC consists of more than 25 law enforcement professional, including 15 former state attorneys general. They’ll also be working to remind citizens in the five U.S. territories to honor the rule of law and stop animal fighting in those jurisdictions. A long-standing presence of animal fighting on these U.S. lands does not mean illegal conduct can or should continue.
We have established a rewards program in the territories to enable citizens who report on illegal animal fighting activities to get cash for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of individuals violating federal law. Visit www.endcockfighting.org.
Cockfighting is inhumane and it’s illegal everywhere in the United States, including on Guam. It’s also a haven for gambling, which can hurt our families. When we participate in this kind of animal abuse, or even watch it, it desensitizes all of us, especially children, to the suffering of others.