With Oklahoma\’s recent outlawing of cockfighting, there are only two places in the United States where cockfighting is legal — Louisiana and New Mexico. Although an effort to ban cockfighting in New Mexico failed in the state Senate in February, it is moving forward in the state House.

The proposed law would make sponsoring, arranging, holding or participating in a cockfight a fourth-degree felony. Cockfighting is already illegal in 13 New Mexico counties and 28 municipalities according to a Reuters report on the proposed ban.

But the sport is apparently popular in rural parts of the state. Ronald Barron, president of the New Mexico Game Birds Association which claims 7,000 members, cockfighting generates more than $51 million a year in revenues to the state, including an active export industry that sends game birds to the Philippines.

Despite that, Animal Protection Voters of New Mexico — which supports the ban — was touting a poll that it says shows more than 80 percent of New Mexico voters favor a ban on cockfighting. Danielle Bay of the Animal Protection Voters of New Mexico told Reuters, \”Forty-eight other states in this country have banned cockfighting, most of them over 100 years ago. New Mexico\’s time has come.\”

With the New Mexico legislature set to adjourn on March 22 and the state Senate already having passed on the measure, however, it doesn\’t seem likely that an end to cockfighting will be forthcoming soon in New Mexico.

Source:

New Mexico considers cockfighting ban. Zelie Pollon, Reuters, February 15, 2003.