Raids of cockfighting complexes continue to reveal that California may have more illegal cockfighting than any other state
San Francisco — Animal Wellness Action applauded the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office for raiding a cockfighting complex with more than 800 birds. Deputies discovered birds of the major fighting breeds, cockfighting knives, betting slips, and other telltale signs of the blood sport.
While California’s anti-cockfighting law includes comprehensive prohibitions, including bans on possessing fighting birds, it has some of the weakest penalties in the West. Cockfighting crimes typically offer only misdemeanor penalties even as its border states treat staged animal fighting between roosters as felonies.
“We applaud the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office for unraveling a massive cockfighting complex, and it has gathered up unmistakable evidence to support its arrest of the operator,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action, which leads the national effort to eradicate animal fighting, working closely with Showing Animals Respect and Kindness.
“Cockfighters have flocked to California because the state has the weakest penalties in the West when it comes to staged animal fighting. We’ll see more of these massive complexes like the one in Sonoma County until the state gets serious about cracking down on this malicious cruelty,” Pacelle said.
A decade ago, the USDA estimated that there may be as many as 8 million fighting birds in California. “From San Diego and Los Angeles counties to San Joaquin and Sonoma counties, local law enforcement is cracking down on massive cockfighting complexes,” added Pacelle. “But even more enforcement, and stiff penalties for these animal-cruelty crimes, are required to disable a vast network of illegal operators that stretches all the way across California.”
There are 22 counties with policies restricting private ownership of large numbers of roosters. “These local ordinances must be enforced to halt cockfighting derbies and the trafficking of fighting birds for combat and for sale to other cockfighters,” Pacelle said.
Animal Wellness Action and SHARK have also exposed the interstate and international trafficking of fighting birds, with California cockfighters shipping thousands of birds to Pacific Rim nations that have major illegal cockfighting syndicates. The organization has repeatedly investigated cockfighting trafficker Domi Corpus, but federal authorities have failed to halt his massive sales of fighting birds to the Philippines and other nations.
Gamefowl are high-risk disease vectors and reservoirs because they are widely sold and traded, deliberately mixed under stressful conditions at fighting derbies, reared under poor biosecurity, and employ husbandry or fighting practices that spread disease.
Ten of the 15 U.S. outbreaks of virulent Newcastle disease originated from illegally smuggled gamefowl for cockfighting, causing major disease epidemics in southern California in 2002-03 and 2018-20. At least 16 million birds died and close to $1 billion was spent to control U.S. vND outbreaks in California alone. The United States now is in the hold of a bird flu outbreak that has cost the United States billions more and resulted in the depopulation of 195 million birds, including nearly 150 million laying hens.
Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy are promoting a pair of federal bills to combat organized animal fighting. H.R. 7371, the No Flight, No Fight Act, would halt the trafficking and smuggling of fighting birds from the United States to dozens of foreign countries for deadly battles in barbaric cockfighting derbies.
That legislation complements the FIGHT Act, H.R. 3946 and S. 1514, which seeks to ban live and online gambling on animal fights, allows for forfeiture of property seized at an illegal fighting operation, and bars shipping fighting birds through the U.S. Postal Service. That bill has nearly 1,100 endorsers including National Sheriffs’ Association, the National District Attorneys Association, the American Gaming Association, and the United Egg Producers.