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Dear John,

We are in the biggest battle over cockfighting in the United States in 20 years.

We are poised to introduce a major rewrite of our federal law against animal fighting, enhancing capacity for federal law enforcement and even private citizens to take action against dogfighters and cockfighters. The measure we are initiating will establish a national ban on gambling on animal fighting, it will ban shipping adult fighting animals through the U.S. mail, and it will allow private citizens to initiate civil actions against animal fighters when law enforcement doesn’t act on reliable information.

Yet even while we engage that critical fight, we are pressing the case in the states and dealing with brazen cockfighters disregarding the law, and in some case, trying to gut the laws against animal fighting. Let me give you updates from the front lines.

Oklahoma: This is the most urgent theater of action, with the state’s anti-cockfighting and anti-dogfighting laws under an actual threat of having the penalty provisions gutted!

Shockingly, the Oklahoma House has already passed a bill (HB 1729) to drop the fines for dogfighting to no more than $500! That is a minor nuisance for the organized criminals who engage in dogfighting!

And the House kept alive a bill, HB 2530, to allow counties to opt out of the state’s strong anti-cockfighting law. They want to create cockfighting refuges throughout the state!

Even though the state’s anti-cockfighitng law is strong, rural elected sheriffs have not been enforcing it and prosecutions have been rare. What’s most shocking is that cockfighters are openly defying the law, staging fights throughout Oklahoma and shipping tens of thousands of birds all over the world from their cockfighting farms.

The cockfighters even formed a political action committee and they’ve donated tens of thousands of dollars to try to buy off politicians, including the Governor and the Speaker of the House!

We need help to fight this effort in the legislature and throughout Oklahoma. Will you make a contribution to the Center to support this vital work? [[link removed]]
DONATE NOW [[link removed]]


Kentucky: Animal Wellness Action and our partner organization, Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK) released a list of 16 cockfighting arenas from Butler to Pike counties that have illegally operated in the state. We’ve released the actual coordinates of these fighting venues — a first-ever disclosure of this number of fighting arenas in any state in the nation. We are now demanding that law enforcment shut them down.

Alabama: We conducted a statewide press conference in Alabama too and wrote to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and alerted her to the dangerous overlap between widespread illegal cockfighting operations and the state’s massive commercial poultry operations, urging her to initiate in this session a priority legislative effort to upgrade the state’s anemic anti-cockfighting law, which has gone unchanged since 1896. That law is the nation’s weakest of its type, stipulating that “any person who keeps a cockpit or who in any public place fights cocks shall, upon conviction, be fined no less than $20 but no more than $50,” the letter stated.

Dogfighting is a felony in Alabama, but cockfighting warrants less in the way of penalties than a parking ticket. This weak law has provided an invitation for enthusiasts to flock to Alabama and grow major cockfighting operations, especially as other states adopted felony-level penalties for these crimes.”

If we don’t prevail in these fights, here’s what will happen: *
Countless
thousands
of
birds
bred
for
fighting
will
die
in
pits
in
Oklahoma,
Kentucky,
Alabama,
Tennessee
throughout
the
world.
*
Millions
of
birds
will
be
shipped
from
cockfighting
farms
in
these
states
all
over
the
world
to
fighting
arenas
from
Mexico
to
Guam
to
the
Philippines.
*
Lawless
cockfighters
from
other
states
will
flood
into
these
states,
bringing
their
money
laundering,
narcotics
trafficking,
and
illegal
gambling
into
the
state.
*
The
current
Avian
Influenza
outbreak,
which
has
already
resulted
in
mass
depopulation
of
commercially
raised
birds
for
eggs
and
meat,
will
get
wind
in
its
sails
and
create
even
more
havoc.


Please donate today. How can the nation root out systemic forms of animal cruelty if lawmakers and governors tolerate open cockfighting throughout the nation? We cannot allow this kind of setback for our movement to help all animals. [[link removed]]
DONATE NOW [[link removed]]


Please dig deep and let’s protect our laws and bring these cockfighters to justice.
[[link removed]] Wayne Pacelle
President
Center for a Humane Economy
DONATE NOW [[link removed]]
WEBSITE [[link removed]]
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Center for a Humane Economy
PO Box 30845
Bethesda, MD 208243
United States
If you need to you can unsubscribe here: unsubscribe: [link removed]
You can also click here to donate [[link removed]] .