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The "sport" of cockfighting remains legal in only three states – Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico -- but is causing a widespread controversy following the introduction of a bill by Senator (and veterinarian) Wayne Allard (R-Colorado) that would ban the interstate sale of chickens for cockfighting purposes. Both of Louisiana’s senators, John Breaux and Mary Landrieu, oppose the bill based largely on a states' rights argument (the individual states should be left to decide whether or not cockfighting remains legal rather than the federal government).
For his part Allard says he is only trying to close a loophole in the Animal Welfare Act. The AWA prohibits the interstate transportation of fighting dogs but is silent about fighting birds. "The senator doesn’t want to tell the people of Louisiana what to do," Allard’s spokesman Sean Conway told the New Orleans Times-Picayune, "but you’ve got breeders shipping roosters all over (the country), not just to Louisiana, and law enforcement people are having a heck of a time cracking down."
Of course numerous animal rights groups have endorsed the proposed new law. What has surprised me is the level of support for cockfighting among otherwise level headed animal welfare advocates. A completely unscientific poll conducted on my this site asked people, "Should cockfighting be banned?" Of the 396 people who responded, 131 agreed that it should be banned while 265 said no, cockfighting should not be banned. In discussing this result, it quickly became apparent that the support of cockfighting was actually a rather rigid opposition to animal rights groups.
The argument seems to be that if animal rights groups support it, it must be a bad idea. Giving any ground to the animal rights movement or conceding that cockfighting might be abusive would be giving PETA and other groups a victory that can be ill-afforded, according to proponents of this view.
In my opinion this is a self-defeating position wrought with numerous problems. First, it gives way too much credence to the animal rights groups. Whether or not a particular use of an animals is justifiable should be based on evaluating it from an animal welfare position rather than on what animal rights groups and activists think about it. Inevitably animal welfare and animal rights advocates will occasionally arrive at the same position for different reasons. Discarding animal welfare views simply because they happen to coincide with the animal rights position on occasion is neither wise nor prudent.
Second, it is an obviously hypocritical position. Nobody is going to (or even should) believe animal welfare advocates when they claim to want to minimize the suffering of laboratory animals or animals raised in an agricultural setting if those same advocates then turn a blind eye to something such as cockfighting. Where is the consistency in that position?
In fact cockfighting seems to violate all of the precepts of a reasonable animal welfare philosophy and should be banned. Cockfighting is not a case of a necessary human use of animals that simply needs to be regulated so as to minimize suffering. The whole point of cockfighting is to introduce suffering under a semi-controlled environment for the visceral thrill of a gathered crowd or for the thrill of wagering on the often deadly contest. Human beings may need to cause pain and suffering to animals as an unfortunate side effect of some other legitimate use, but to cause pain and suffering as an end in itself is the antithesis of animal welfare.
The Associated Press recently ran a story about Cesar Cerda, a 26-year-old California resident, who received what is believed to be the longest prison sentence ever handed down for cruelty to animals. Cerda was sentenced to 7 years in jail for training dogs to fight each other to the death. As the AP described Cerda, "[he] earned up to $5,000 a month from gamblers who watched the animals fight in a bloodstained pit." Prosecutor Brian Myers described how "he took these dogs to the brink of death and then nursed them back to health so they could fight again." Because of their training, all of the dogs seized from Cerda had to be euthanized.
The sentence may have been a bit long, but the principle behind the ban on animal fighting seems immensely sound to this writer. These animals are being used to study medical problems or raised for food or even used for their fur. They’re being trained to fight for the sheer enjoyment that other people get from watching them fighting.