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Dear John,
Animal fighting is a curse. It is malicious cruelty of the worst kind. It’s unjustifiable in any place where rational thought counts.
If you’re not convinced, take a gander at the details of the recent arrest of a senior Pentagon official involved in a dogfighting ring. He was at it for 20 years before federal authorities arrested him and his partner in crime.
According to a story in the Washington Post, “[t]he ring regularly trained dogs for fights, ran thousands of dollars in bets on the outcomes, and executed dogs that didn’t die during matches, court records state.”
“Investigators found battery jumper cables, which allegedly were used to execute dogs at [Frederick] Moorefield’s house, along with five pit bull-type dogs at his house and five pit bull-type dogs at [Mario] Flythe’s house, court records show,” according to that same Washington Post story. “The FBI, the Department of Agriculture and other local and federal agencies raided both houses on Sept. 6, according to a federal affidavit, finding weighted collars and heavy metal chains used to increase fighting dogs’ strength. Authorities said they also found ‘an apparatus that is used for involuntarily inseminating female dogs’ and stains ‘consistent with bloodstains from dogfights.’”
This is revolting. But it’s not surprising.
We’ve been shouting from the rooftops about the widespread nature of illicit dogfighting and cockfighting in the United States. We’ve been investigating these crimes and delivering a roadmap for enforcement to federal and state authorities.
Indeed, our Animal Fighting Is the Pits campaign is designed to eradicate staged fights involving dogs or roosters with knives strapped to their legs.
We’ve long known that good laws are not enough. We need more enforcement of the law. That’s why we applaud the FBI and other federal authorities from breaking up this dogfighting ring, allegedly operated by a senior official within the Pentagon.
The raid was good news, as was a bust just a few weeks ago to dismantle a separate dogfighting network that stretched from Indiana to Mexico.
But there are vast stretches of the United States without any meaningful enforcement and where the animal fighters operate with impunity. To our great dismay, for instance, the federal government has conducted no enforcement actions against animal fighting in Oklahoma, Guam, or Puerto Rico, even though we know where the animal fighters operate.
It's spotty enforcement and funding for enforcement that we are targeting. That’s why last week we pushed, and won passage of, an amendment to secure at least $1 million in enforcement spending by the USDA’s law-enforcement arm for animal fighting cases.
And that’s also why we are working to strengthen the federal law and to give law enforcement more tools to bring down the dogfighters and cockfighters. That measure is the FIGHT Act.
The FIGHT Act creates a private right of action against animal fighters. Citizens can sue dogfighters and cockfighters in civil court if law enforcement doesn’t act on credible information about illegal fighting activities.
The FIGHT Act also bans gambling on on-line cockfights, which is a $10-billion-plus enterprise in the Philippines alone. And it allows for the forfeiture of property and other possessions used in the commission of an animal fighting crime.
It was a major moment when we passed a law in Congress in 2018 to ban animal fighting everywhere in the United States. But now we are locked onto the task of enforcement and shutting down the pits, the gamecock farms, the pit bull yards, and all of the other cogs of animal fighting.
I hope you’ll write your federal lawmakers in support of the FIGHT Act.
And I also hope you’ll donate today to support our Animal Fighting Is the Pits campaign. If we cannot stop these forms of despicable and illegal cruelty, how can we address other structural problems such as factory farming, animal testing, the fur trade, and others?
We must finish off animal fighting. Will you commit to joining us in this task?
For the animals,
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Wayne Pacelle
President
Animal Wellness Action
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