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Cockfighting and Dogfighting: Crippling Animal fighting in US with New Legislation, Calling Out Lax Enforcement in KY, Playing Winning Defense in Oklahoma
Benefiting from careful planning and research, the Fighting Inhumane Gambling and High-Risk Trafficking (FIGHT) Act H.R. 2742 was introduced to combat animal fighting – a barbaric practice that results in several injury and death for millions of animals mutilated and killed for illegal gambling and often largely tied to narcotics, money laundering, shootings and murder.
Read a summary of this bill here [[link removed]] .
This bill is led by U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., and Andrea Salinas, D-Oregon, with a Senate bill soon to follow. H.R. 2742 will ban broadcasting dogfights and cockfights for gambling in the United States, halt any shipment of adult fighting birds through the U.S mails, enhance forfeiture authority for seizure of properties used to conduct illegal animal fighting ventures, and create a citizen suit provision to allow civil actions against known animal fighters.
Days before the bill launched, we held a virtual news conference to announce our work with Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK), including a letter signed by 50 other animal welfare organizations calling on Kentucky’s Gov. Andy Beshear [[link removed]] and Attorney General Daniel Cameron “to initiate an investigation of the Kentucky State Police (KSP) for that agency’s unacceptable, repeated failures to enforce state law” against cockfighting and closely related organized crimes.
The effort by the national cockfighting community to create a cockfighting enclave in Oklahoma has so far failed [[link removed]] , with Animal Wellness Action and partners blocking the effort [[link removed]] to gut the state felony law. With the national cockfighting community funding the effort to weaken the law [[link removed]] , it was a critical defensive effort on our part. According to records from the Oklahoma Ethics Commission, a pro-cockfighting group named the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission [[link removed]] raised $71,000 for its political activities by the beginning of the year and made campaign donations to 34 candidates and sitting lawmakers. Statewide polling, however, revealed that 87 percent of Oklahoma favor a ban on cockfighting, with all voters in all five Congressional districts there [[link removed]] favoring the ban, noted Pat McFerron, the architect of the first Sooner Survey [[link removed]] on cockfighting.
We continue to feed law enforcement information about cockfighting, working with SHARK and other organizations to root out the illegal enterprises. There was a shooting at a cockfighting in Dallas [[link removed]] in March, and then a mass shooting on April 15 in the Honolulu [[link removed]] area, revealing again the tangle of crimes and violence associated with staged animal fighting.
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Bacon, Salinas introduce legislation to crack down on animal fighting | Nebraska Examiner
Animal welfare groups concerned about cockfighting in KY | whas11.com
Cockfighting ring investigation leads to more arrests in Marlboro County | WPDE
Kentucky State Police have failed to investigate cockfighting complaints, groups charge (yahoo.com)
Bills seeking to legalize cockfighting in Oklahoma stalled (oklahoman.com)
Oklahoma Could Reduce Penalties for Animal Fighting | Dallas Observer
Fatal Hawaii shooting shows dangers of popular cockfights | Region | enidnews.com
Fatal Hawaii shooting shows dangers of popular cockfights | News, Sports, Jobs - Maui News
Cockfight shootings in Maili highlight danger, residents say (yahoo.com)
Fatal Hawaii Shooting Shows Dangers of Popular Cockfights (usnews.com)
As We Ready Legislation to End Sales of Kangaroo Parts, Nike Announces Global Policy to Halt Purchasing Kangaroo Skins
As we ready legislation in both chambers of Congress to end U.S. sales of kangaroo parts, we are also training firepower on Adidas and New Balance to end their use of skins. Adidas is still hedging on the issue even after Puma announced an end to use of kangaroo skins for soccer cleats, and Nike followed suit with a similar pledge. The announcements from Nike and Puma are a double-barreled win for our relentless Kangaroos Are Not Shoes [[link removed]] campaign, which seeks to get the entire athletic shoe industry to shed kangaroo skins in its supply chains.
Nike announced [[link removed]] it will debut a new Tiempo Legend Elite made without kangaroo skin — a turnaround for the company’s primary soccer shoe. “The upper has a new material that is a better performance solution and replaces the use of kangaroo leather.” The statement went on to note that Nike “will stop making any product with kangaroo leather in 2023.”
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Nike to drop use of kangaroo skins for its shoes in 2023 | Reuters
Nike's kangaroo leather controversy ends with 'seismic' announcement (yahoo.com)
Nike vows to stop making football boots with kangaroo leather after campaign backed by celebrities | Daily Mail Online
Nike to stop using kangaroo skins for its shoes in 2023 (msn.com)
A Serious Push for National Anti-Horse Slaughter Legislation, Finally
Our continent-wide investigation revealed that the extraterritorial slaughter of American horses is rapidly waning but still presents a merciless journey for 20,000 equine victims a year. Now, we are gearing up for a ban on the slaughter of American horses throughout North America, including live exports of horses to Canada and Mexico. We have publicly signaled our plan to attach the provision to the forthcoming Farm bill. National Geographic wrote a detailed news report on our investigation in March. You can write your two U.S. Senators and your U.S. Representative on the subject by using this tool [[link removed]] .
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How U.S. racehorses end up on dinner plates (nationalgeographic.com)
Anti-Doping Law in Thoroughbred Racing Takes Effect
At the end of 2022, Animal Wellness Action, along with The Jockey Club, worked with key lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate to amend the Horseracing Integrity and Safety (HISA) Act, fixing a provision in the law that a federal appellate court declared unconstitutional in November and reviving the race-day doping ban. Enabled by that legislative maneuver, HISA then took full effect in the United States on March 27. Thanks to that effort, the vast majority of racetracks that operate Thoroughbred horse races will now adhere to uniform testing and enforcement standards and to end race-day doping of horses. HISA's ADMC Program, administered by the Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit (HIWU), brings all testing and results management under one national authority, standardizes the categories of substances laboratories test for, and institutes penalties for violations.
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Horseracing-Legislative fix to horseracing safety law included in spending bill | Reuters
Horse racing-Appeals court rules horse racing safety law unconstitutional | Reuters
Fire at Factory Farm Reminds Nation for the Need to Break Government-Financed Dairy Industry Monopoly in Public Schools
Soon after we worked in May to introduce legislation to end a federal “milk mandate” in the National School Lunch Program, the fiery death of 18,000 dairy cows at a farm in the panhandle of Texas reminded the public of the stakes for the animals, with industry consolidation putting intensively confined animals at risk from fires and other disasters. H.R. 1619 [[link removed]] , known as the Addressing Digestive Distress in Stomachs of Our Youth, or ADD SOY Act, would require public schools to offer soy milk to children participating in the National School Lunch Program and direct the USDA to reimburse schools for the cost of that plant-based alternative, as it does for cow’s milk. U.S. Reps. Troy Carter, D-La., and Nancy Mace, R-S.C., want to deliver a nutritionally equivalent choice to kids, which is especially important because half of the participants in the National School Lunch Program are lactose intolerant and throw away 30 percent of the milk purchased by the government in the carton. That not only burns $300 million of taxpayer dollars every year, but it negates the sacrifices of cows to produce the milk. A cow on an industrial farm produces 22,500 pounds of milk in a year (more than three times the volume that a cow produced decades ago), with the animals often suffering from foot, leg, and mammary problems, with nearly half of cows having inflammation of their udders (mastitis).
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Animal Wellness Action Statement on Fiery Deaths of 18,000 Dairy Cows Inside Factory Farm
ADD SOY Act Introduced in House to Break Dairy Industry Monopoly in Public Schools | The Ritz Herald
The Animal Milk Mandate in Our Nation’s Schools | Center for a Humane Economy
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