Dear John,
In 2018, Animal Wellness Action and its affiliates won passage of an amendment to the 2018 Farm bill to extend the federal ban on cockfighting to Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. territories.
The effect of that law was to ban cockfighting on every inch of United States soil.
Since then, we’ve been unrelenting in our
End Cockfighting campaign to root out this staged animal combat wherever it festers.
We’ve sided with the federal government in a series of federal court cases brought by cockfighting interests in Puerto Rico and Guam who wanted to overturn the law as applied to them, and we’ve been on the winning side of every legal proceeding.
As a follow up, we’ve conducted extensive investigations on Guam and in seven states and identified 100 major cockfighting kingpins, including traffickers who sell fighting birds reared in the United States and all over the world. Our investigation shows that the Guam Department of Agriculture allowed the shipment of 11,500 adult animals to the island for fighting over the last five years.
Last month, Dr. Thomas Pool, who is now our senior veterinarian, dropped a bombshell on Guam. He served as the Territorial Veterinarian for Guam for 17 years, leaving his post there earlier this year, and he confirmed that these shipments were illegal.
He said he refused to sign the import permits because he knew the transport of these animals to fighting pits on Guam violated federal law!
The Guam Department of Agriculture got some low-level staffer to sign the permits.
But now we have confirmation from the top veterinarian on the island that this ugly trade was exactly what we said it was — a criminal trade centered around animal fighting.
Dozens of those cockfighting kingpins in Oklahoma, Alabama, Hawaii, and California knew that Guam was a profit center for them to sell their birds — sometimes for $2,000 per animal — into the fighting pits of the U.S. territory.
All along, we knew that passing a comprehensive law to ban all animal fighting was important and significant. But alone, it was insufficient. We must have enforcement.
That’s why we have been simultaneously working to give federal law enforcement more resources to get the job done.
Specifically, we conceived of and are pushing the Animal Cruelty Enforcement (ACE) Act to create an Animal Cruelty Crimes section within the agency. We now have more than 300 law enforcement agencies and animal welfare groups that have endorsed this legislative campaign.
Cockfighting is a morally and legally settled matter. But in practical terms, it’s still happening, and that’s why we won’t rest until the last cockfighting pit is shuttered and the last gamecock fighting operation is wiped out. We ask you to write to your lawmakers to help us pass this law and enhance enforcement.
And more broadly, will you help us strengthen enforcement of our laws against cockfighting and dogfighting by urging your lawmakers to cosponsor the Animal Cruelty Enforcement Act?
We would welcome your donations to push this campaign ahead with more of our own resources.
The only place we want people to experience animal fighting is by reading about it in a history book. We want the next generation to ask the question, “Did people really stage fights between animals just to watch them kill each other?”
For the animals,
Wayne Pacelle
President
