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Dogfighting and Cockfighting Are Rampant and That’s Precisely Why We Need Congress to Pass the FIGHT Act [[link removed]]
Dear John,
The dogfighters never give the animals a break. They stage fights from New Year’s Day to New Year’s Eve in the dark corners where they operate. It’s perhaps the most despicable and malevolent form of animal cruelty in our nation. And that’s saying something.
Just this month, two New Jersey men appeared in court on dogfighting charges. They operated “From Da Bottom Kennels” and house trained dogs for fighting and acquired, without veterinarian assistance or scrutiny, skin staplers and other wound equipment to crudely patch up dogs grievously wounded during combat. They also shared videos of dog fights, dogs training to fight and—this is hard even to write—hanging to death underperforming dogs.
Cockfighting is gruesome and horrid in its own distinct ways, with the owners of the birds strapping knives or curved ice picks to the legs of the combatants to enhance the bloodletting and to virtually guarantee that at least one bird won’t make it out of the pit alive.
The cockfighters just ended a three-month respite in their activities, and the cockfighting season started anew on Thanksgiving. That leaves us to work with our partners to sniff out illegal fights and to alert law enforcement to these cruel and crime-infested spectacles. But none of these fights would be staged at all if there were a methodical crackdown on them and the arrest and incarceration of the perpetrators.
I don’t want one more cockfighting season to launch. And I don’t want to learn of one more dogfighting match.
It's critical that we finish off animal fighting. Will you commit to joining us in this task? [[link removed]]
DONATE NOW [[link removed]]
Federal and state authorities have made a range of other arrests, including of a senior official who worked at the Pentagon and ran an alleged dogfighting operation for more than 20 years!
The cockfighters are even busier, and their eight-month fighting season—from Thanksgiving to the end of July—is now in progress. The cockfighters have sharpened the knives and gaffs, and they are ready to affix them to the birds’ legs for lethal combat as a spectator sport.
These forms of intentional cruelty make me sick. And angry. And I hope it inspires the same revulsion and sense of purpose in you.
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 [[link removed]] 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 agencies and so many county sheriffs for breaking up some of the dogfighting and cockfighting rings I touched on above. And we have a rewards program that offers cash to tipsters who alert us or law enforcement to these intentional crimes against animals. (Email [email protected] [[email protected]] .)
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. In fact, we recently called out [[link removed]] Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt for issuing a video tribute to the cockfighters in The Sooner State.
It's spotty enforcement of anti-animal-fighting laws that we’ve identified as a core problem. That’s why last month we pushed for and won passage of a U.S. House 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—bipartisan legislation in the House and Senate to tackle these problems.
There are a number of provisions in the FIGHT Act, but one of the most important is to create a private right of action against animal fighters. If the measure passes, 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 assets used in the commission of an animal-fighting crime. That kind of penalty—losing a house or a truck—will be felt by any animal fighter.
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 features of the organized crimes of dogfighting and cockfighting.
I hope you’ll write your federal lawmakers in support of the FIGHT Act. [[link removed]]
WRITE TO YOUR LAWMAKERS [[link removed]]
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? [[link removed]]
DONATE NOW [[link removed]]
For the animals,
Wayne Pacelle [[link removed]] Wayne Pacelle
President
Center for a Humane Economy
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