Chicken lobby: Curb cockfights
Breeders cry fowl, counter claims of poultry industry
By Josephine Hearn

The National Chicken Council (NCC), the main lobbying voice for the chicken industry, last week endorsed legislation to curb cockfighting, a practice that the group said is both inhumane and contributes to the spread of avian diseases infecting commercial flocks

“We are concerned that the nationwide traffic in game birds creates a continuing hazard for the dissemination of animal diseases,” NCC President George Watts wrote March 30 to Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. The panel has not yet considered a proposed anti-cockfighting bill. “On the basis of both humane treatment of animals and protection of the health of the commercial flock, we urge you to support [anti-cockfighting legislation] in the current session of Congress.”

The NCC, which represents chicken giants Tyson Foods and Perdue, becomes the first nationwide agriculture group to join animal-rights advocates, law enforcement organizations and veterinary groups in calling for stricter penalties on cockfighting, which is banned in all states save Louisiana and New Mexico but continues to flourish elsewhere under lax enforcement.

A group of bird breeders, the United Gamefowl Breeders Association (UGBA), shot back at the NCC yesterday with a letter countering the assertion that game birds spread avian disease.

“You blatantly attack our industry … [but] it is the commercial poultry industry that has threatened the livelihood of other birds by transporting poultry that can release airborne pathogens (e.g. feathers being released) through the open-side transportation methods used on U.S. highways,” wrote UGBA President Larry T. Mathews.

Mathews also expressed regret that the NCC would side with animal-rights activists.
UGBA members have “withstood countless assaults over the years by such groups as
PETA and the Humane Society of the United States. These same groups have viciously attacked your member companies as well for their alleged inhumane treatment of animals. We fail to see why you would support such animal rights groups that still to this day attack your way of doing business,” wrote Mathews.

The Humane Society, meanwhile, welcomed the NCC’s endorsement of anti-cockfighting legislation. “You have the law enforcement community, the humane community, the veterinary community and now the poultry industry all backing the legislation and the only people opposing it are illegal cock- and dogfighters,” said Wayne Pacelle, a senior vice president at the Humane Society.

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), a veterinarian who has called animal fighting “barbaric” and “sickening,” proposed a bill last spring with Sens. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) that targets interstate commerce in fighting animals. The legislation would make it a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison, to transport game birds or fighting dogs across state lines.

Law enforcement officials have said they would be unlikely to step up enforcement of anti-cockfighting laws while the crime remains a misdemeanor.

Ensign’s bill also would ban interstate commerce in cockfighting implements, such as the knives and gaffs that are typically attached to a bird’s legs to make the fight bloodier.

Identical legislation (H.R. 1532) was introduced in the House by Reps. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and Rob Andrews (D-N.J.).

Although neither bill has received committee consideration, both have widespread support. As of yesterday, the House bill had 196 co-sponsors and the Senate 51.

The chicken-industry letter comes on the heels of an outbreak earlier this year of bird flu centered in Delaware, where tens of thousands of birds were slaughtered to halt the spread of the disease.

Although gamecocks were not implicated in that outbreak, they were a factor in the spread of exotic Newcastle disease, a respiratory ailment, in flocks in California in 2002 and 2003, according to the Department of Food and Agriculture of the State of California.

“Healthcare in the game-bird world is obviously rudimentary,” wrote the NCC’s Watts.

UGBA’s Mathews took issue with this finding as well. “At no time has the USDA ever held a game-fowl breeder responsible for causing this outbreak,” he wrote.

Lawmakers and animal-rights advocates have been pushing for harsher cockfighting penalties for several years.

Ensign succeeded last fall in attaching his bill as an amendment to the Senate version of President Bush’s Healthy Forests Initiative (S. 1902), but the provision was removed during conference with the House.

An earlier anti-cockfighting measure passed as part of the House and Senate versions of the 2002 farm bill. It placed a ban on interstate commerce and international export of fighting animals and made the offense a felony. The felony provision, however, was dropped in conference.

Proponents of these measures point to the power of the cockfighting lobby, primarily UGBA, as an impediment to passing significant anti-cockfighting bills.

According to federal lobbying records, UGBA is represented on the Hill by former Democratic Rep. Bill K. Brewster (Okla.) and former Hill staffer Shane Doucet — both of lobbying firm Capitol Hill Consulting Group.

Doucet is a former legislative aide to Rep. Chris John (D-La.) and the son of former Louisiana state appeals court judge Ned Doucet, who is one of three Democratic candidates running to succeed John in the state’s 7th Congressional District. John is running to replace retiring Sen. John Breaux (D).

John has been a proponent of cockfighting, calling it a “cultural, family-type thing that has been practiced in our state for many years.”