Drone Footage of Animal Fighting Exposes States with Weak Laws, Highlights Health Risks

Criminals involved in animal fighting know they won’t get a free pass.  Animal Wellness Action is watching, looking to cut them off at every turn. So far, the tools we’ve used include  legislation, litigation, criminal investigation, and law enforcement. Now, we’re adding technology.

Animal Wellness Action recently teamed up with the nonprofit Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK) to use drones to capture footage of cockfighting operations, which are illegal in all 50 states at the federal and state levels.

“SHARK and Animal Wellness Action are bringing a sense of urgency to this issue,” said Animal Wellness Action President Wayne Pacelle. “No free passes for the cockfighters. We are feeding facts and footage to law enforcement and asking law men and women to honor their oaths to support all of the laws of the states and the United States.”

On February 3, the organizations held a joint press conference to release new drone footage taken in Mississippi, one of just eight states with misdemeanor penalties for cockfighting. Before that, we conducted press conferences in Alabama, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, which also have a vast network of criminal cockfighters. The groups have called on state lawmakers to strengthen their state laws and align them with the prohibitions on animal fighting in other states and at the federal level.

Drone footage shows a cockfighting pit in Mississippi on the day of a “derby.”

The recent virtual conference specifically called on Mississippi’s Lee County Sheriff Jim H. Johnson to stamp out three cockfighting pits that SHARK had investigated and found to be staging illegal cockfights.

“Our investigation shows that cockfighters are in full fighting mode in Lee County,” said Steve Hindi, president of SHARK. “We learned of these fights from an informant and notified the sheriff. We documented that the fights proceeded, and we are deeply disappointed that there was no law enforcement intervention to stop the cruelty and the illegal gambling.”

This request for action came after Union County (Tenn.) Sheriff Billy Breeding and his deputies raided a cockfighting derby in progress, citing 98 individuals with crimes related to cockfighting and preventing more fights that had been planned throughout the day at the major clandestine derby.

Drone footage also is being used to identify breeders of fighting birds in Oklahoma that are illegally being shipped through the U.S. Post Office.

“We are using drones widely to expose cockfighting pits and breeders as well,” Hindi said.

In an unprecedented move in Oklahoma, A handful of state legislators in Oklahoma City are trying to overturn a citizen initiative that in 2002 halted the practice of cockfighting.

Until that vote in 2002, Oklahoma was a rogue hold-out on cockfighting, with state legislators there kowtowing to cockfighters and refusing to pass a ban. Oklahoma was one of three states with legal cockfighting until the people righted the ship of state. Two legislative committees have approved legislation to gut the vote of the people by knocking down penalties to levels that are embarrassingly low levels.

“It’s troubling that cockfighters who are asking for changes to our laws are not obeying them in the first place,” wrote Drew Edmondson, in his powerful February opinion piece in the Oklahoman titled Cockfighting is contemptible. Oklahoma laws should reflect that.“A series of investigations into illegal cockfighting by Animal Wellness Action have uncovered cockfighters raising and fighting tens of thousands of fighting roosters.”

Both bills will soon move to each chamber’s floor for a vote.

If this happens, we’ll see Oklahoma become a magnet for even more cockfighting, with cockfighters throughout the nation flocking to the state as a haven or a refuge for their staged fights.

Cockfighting enterprises are not just hotspots of cruelty, but a multi-billion-dollar, above-and-below-ground enterprise entwined with illicit drug possession, illegal gambling, prostitution, violence, gang activity, unlawful guns, and money laundering.

The birds are also high-risk vectors and infection reservoirs known to spread zoonotic disease. With the COVID-19 pandemic still a threat, and the nation’s worst-ever outbreak of Avian Influenza wreaking havoc with wild and captive bird populations, it is most certainly time to put combatting cockfighting on America’s priority to-do list.

The birds are also high-risk vectors and infection reservoirs known to spread zoonotic disease. With the COVID-19 pandemic still a threat, and the nation’s worst-ever outbreak of Avian Influenza wreaking havoc with wild and captive bird populations, it is most certainly time to put combatting cockfighting on America’s priority to-do list.

In early February, Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy released a comprehensive 63-page report on cockfighting links with avian influenza and virulent Newcastle Disease (vND). According to the new report from the Center for a Humane Economy, the 15 known introductions of vND into the United States since the first outbreak in 1950 have led to three devastating epidemics, in 1971, 2002, and 2018. Disease introductions occurred from legally imported pet birds (often parrots), imported infected poultry, and game fowl smuggled for cockfighting. Ten of the 15 US vND outbreaks originated from illegally smuggled game fowl for cockfighting.

“Cockfighting drives outbreaks of serious poultry and zoonotic diseases, especially virulent Newcastle disease and highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses,” said Dr. Jim Keen, D.V.M, Ph.D., director of veterinary sciences for the Center for a Humane Economy. He added that HPAI (“bird flu”) and vND are the two most high-impact diseases of poultry worldwide.

The current outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza has resulted in the mass killing of 60 million birds, mainly laying hens. That extraordinary loss of life has driven a surge in egg prices, with a dozen eggs priced between $4 and $7.50 in Tennessee and other parts of the United States. Cockfighting birds, according to Dr. Keen, can play a role in extending the range, duration, and virulence of the outbreak.