Gamefowl News

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Oklahoma agriculture officials are notifying those who deal with poultry about a fatal disease that may have spread from Mexican fighting chickens to fowl in the United States.

The Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry is sending fliers about exotic Newcastle disease to feed stores, bird swap meets and farmers' markets.

The state Agriculture Department also has begun alerting extension offices across the state to look for the foot-and-mouth disease, which affects nearly all birds but not humans.

"We're hoping our safeguards are going to keep it out of the state, but we have to be vigilant," said Jack Carson, spokesman for the state Agriculture Department. "The only way to deal with any outbreak is early detection and fast action to contain it."

The disease was first detected in California in September and was subsequently found in flocks of Arizona and Nevada chickens. There is speculation that Mexican fighting chickens spread the disease to California birds.

"We want our producers to be aware it's there and to take the proper precautions," said Carey Floyd, an Agriculture Department veterinarian. Floyd and two teams of state veterinarians and other experts have been helping Nevada deal with the spread of the disease.

Oklahoma has guidelines identifying the disease and plans on destroying exposed birds and disposing of carcasses, Floyd said.

Taxpayers have spent $36 million to inspect and kill birds exposed to exotic Newcastle disease in California, in some cases paying as much as $1,000 per fighting chicken that had to be killed.

Cockfighting is illegal in California and a new federal law bans interstate transport of the fighting birds, but it is legal to raise them there.

The disease is like foot-and-mouth disease in birds, said Adrian Woodfork, spokesman with the more than 1,000-person Newcastle task force in California.

Woodfork said it is unclear whether the three states are close to containing the disease. More than 3 million birds have already been killed in California to try to protect its multibillion-dollar poultry industry.

Oklahoma's commercial chicken population is nearly 57 million chickens raised by 890 registered poultry farmers. Oklahoma has about 500,000 fighting roosters.

SALEM, Ore. — Raising birds for cockfighting would be banned in Oregon under a bill approved yesterday by a House committee.

The move would bring the state in line with a new federal law that prohibits transporting the animals across state lines. It would also make cockfighting a felony, elevating the crime from its current misdemeanor status.

Oregon banned cockfighting in the 1970s, but breeders can still raise the birds and sell them to New Mexico and Louisiana, the two states that still permit the rooster fights.

Breeders say the state's damp climate makes it one of the most fertile places in the country to raise the birds.

Animal-rights groups pushing for the ban say that allowing people to raise the birds for fighting encourages the activity.

"The reality is that the raising of fighting birds promotes a cruel business," said Kelly Peterson from the Humane Society. "But it's a business that supports illegal gambling, drugs and illegal firearm possession."

Recent police raids of cockfighting rings in Oregon have uncovered more than the birds and the banned razor blades attached to their legs for fights. Police have also seized large amounts of drugs and banned weapons.

In 2001, the House overwhelmingly passed a similar proposal, but it later stalled in the Senate.

Leading the opposition was Sen. Roger Beyer, a Molalla Republican, who argued that the law could force even breeders who raise birds for their feathers or for food out of the business for fear of felony charges.

Whatever happens in the Legislature, the federal law will take effect in May, prohibiting the transport of the birds.

AKC and California dog owners are outraged by legislation that prohibits hunting with dogs or training for that purpose. This bill (AB342) was intended to restrict the hunting of fur-bearing animals with dogs but is extremely poorly worded. As written, AB342 makes it illegal for any dog to hunt, pursue, catch, capture, or kill, or attempt to hunt, pursue, catch, capture, or kill any mammal, or to train a dog for such purposes. If this legislation passes, earthdog, tracking, coonhound, herding, lure coursing, and field trial events could be prohibited. Additionally, any dog that instinctually takes a wild or feral mammal not as an organized hunting or performance event would likewise violate AB342. In effect, any dog chasing a rabbit in his backyard would be prohibited.

AB342 was referred to the Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife. A hearing is scheduled for March 25, 2003. The committee wants to hear from dog owners that will be impacted by this bill. California dog owners should act now...........

.........." He would post a picture of his murdered daughter on a billboard and equate her murder with the slaughter of a chicken. How can any human being do that?...........

You've seen pictures of Jews from the Holocaust: starving, living skeletons, dead men walking, bloated stomachs protruding over shrunken genitals. Or disease-ridden bodies, two to a bunk, no teeth, shaved bald. Or piles and piles of bodies in a heap, Nazis standing nearby, smiling.

Now think of a cow. Or a chicken. Or a pig. You eat those animals, don't you? You enjoy chicken marsala, or a nice juicy steak, or pork rinds. Then, you're a Nazi, too. You might as well have shoved Jews into gas chambers and then burned their bodies to ashes in ovens.

That's what People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) says. Its latest campaign, Holocaust On Your Plate, juxtaposes images of Jews from the Holocaust with pictures of mistreated factory farm animals. The stated purpose is to "(make) the public aware of the parallels between the Jewish genocide of WWII and the horrific and inhumane treatment of animals raised and slaughtered for food."

PETA calls the meat industry the "modern-day Holocaust." The Holocaust On Your Plate campaign website, masskilling.com, asks: "Decades from now, what will you tell your grandchildren when they ask you whose side you were on during the 'animals' holocaust'?" While simultaneously showing pictures of Jews in their camp barracks and chickens in cages, the website slide show informs the viewer: "To animals, all people are Nazis."

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which PETA illegally quotes on its website to justify its campaign, "vigorously condemns" the exhibit as a "gross perversion." Rabbi Marvin Hier, the head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, calls it "obscene." Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League describes it as "outrageous, offensive and taking chutzpah to new heights."

This repulsive exhibit arrived at UCLA on Feb. 27. Enraged, I called the PETA headquarters and spoke with Campaign Coordinator Andrew Butler. Butler was extremely articulate and soft-spoken, but his words were frightening.

I asked Butler if PETA believes that meat-eaters are morally comparable to Nazis. "It's the same sort of mind-set," he responded. Many Holocaust survivors ate meat. By PETA's perverse logic, Holocaust victims are morally equivalent to Nazis. Did Butler understand that by juxtaposing Jewish Holocaust victims and pigs, PETA was minimizing both the Holocaust and the value of human life? "It's understandable that people don't want their suffering compared to the suffering of others," he answered. "It's one way to deal with grief to claim that our suffering is unique. Unfortunately, though, other animals do feel pain in the same way and to the same degree as human beings do."

PETA has no problem using Jews for purposes of its own but stands by silently when Jews are murdered in Israel. Only after the Palestinians detonated bombs strapped to a donkey did PETA complain. PETA President Ingrid Newkirk immediately fired off a letter to Yasser Arafat. "If you have the opportunity, will you please add to your burdens my request that you appeal to all those who listen to you to leave the animals out of this conflict?" Newkirk pleaded. When asked by The Washington Post if she "considered asking Arafat to persuade those who listen to him to stop blowing up people as well" as animals, Newkirk flatly answered: "It's not my business to inject myself into human wars."

I pressed Butler on this point. Why does PETA have so little regard for Jews in Israel, yet feel no qualms about using Jewish Holocaust victims to forward its cause? His answer: "As an organization, our mandate is to speak up whenever animals are abused and whenever animals are caught in the crossfire." However, he continued, "we care deeply about all beings, regardless of species." How reassuring.

The most stunning moment of the interview came when I asked Butler, who has a 6-year-old daughter: "If your child were, God forbid, brutally murdered, would you feel comfortable allowing pictures of your child's body to be placed on billboards alongside pictures of a slaughtered chicken?" He replied, "I would say that if some good could come from my child's death, then that would be a good thing ... " He would post a picture of his murdered daughter on a billboard and equate her murder with the slaughter of a chicken. How can any human being do that?

Human life and animal life are not comparable. While cruelty toward animals is reprehensible and damnable, it is certainly not on a par with genocide. Only a Nazi could equate the two. The Nazis equated Jews with animals. In its Holocaust On Your Plate exhibit, PETA picks up where the Nazis left off.

Officials Send Out Information About Fatal Fowl Disease

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