...... it is illegal to possess a live chicken in New York City, the ASPCA said......
 
.......The altered birds, which had missing combs, shaved chests and sharpened spurs, were euthanized........
 
Would The AR Experts Know Spurs Grow Naturally Sharp?
 
Would The AR Experts Know Trimming Combs Is A Standard Poultry Practice?
 
Since When Is Removing Feathers From The Chest Of A Chicken Against The Law?
 
 

Bronx Man Arrested With 15 Cockfighting Roosters

(Bronx-AP, March 13, 2005) — A Bronx man who owned 15 roosters that had been shaved and surgically altered for cockfighting was arrested on Sunday, animal protection authorities said.
 
The arrest of Orlando Fernandez, 54, capped an American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals investigation that began Feb. 8, when agents seized 25 birds, including the 15 with scars typical of fighting roosters, from the basement of a Bronx house.

Fernandez, who did not live in the house, was charged with 15 counts of possession of fighting animals after investigators determined the birds belonged to him, and he could face up to a year in prison for each count if convicted, ASPCA spokesman Joe Pentangelo said.

"We are committed to combatting rooster fighting," Pentangelo said.

Fernandez, who was being booked Sunday evening, did not have a listed telephone number.

The fighting cocks were seized after a police officer saw a man carrying one of them outside the house and called the ASPCA because it is illegal to possess a live chicken in New York City, the ASPCA said. Also found were syringes, vitamins and antibiotics, which often are used to treat the cocks after they have been injured in fights, the ASPCA said.

The altered birds, which had missing combs, shaved chests and sharpened spurs, were euthanized. The other 10 were taken to an animal care center.

The ASPCA recently launched a toll-free hot line for New Yorkers to report animal abuse: 877-THE-ASPCA.

The ASPCA, founded in 1866, is a privately funded organization that provides education, shelter outreach and poison control programming and lobbies for animal welfare legislation nationwide. Its agents are officers of the peace, authorized to carry out warrants and carry firearms.

In 2003, the ASPCA rescued 46 purebred wire hair fox terriers that were found stuffed into cages and covered with debris in the basement of a Bronx house whose owner had died.

And when a Sing Sing prison guard crushed five kittens to death in a trash compactor in March 2001, the ASPCA cared for their mother, Midnight. The guard was sentenced to a year in jail.

Source: http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/news/apress_031305_fightingroosters.html

Local Briefs
March 13, 2005

<snip>

Arkansas man accused of breaking into club in Ida

An 18-year-old Arkansas man is accused of breaking into a club that hosts regular cockfighting events near Ida.

Colby Allen, 18, of Kiblah, Ark., recently was booked into Caddo Correctional Center on a charge of unauthorized entry of a business, Caddo sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Chadwick said.

Allen is accused of breaking into Ark-La-Tex Game Club on U.S. Highway 71 on Feb. 27 and dumping over cans of trash and dead roosters. A large window pane also was broken, Chadwick said.

Allen, who lives a few miles from the club, previously worked for its owners, Chadwick said. Other break-ins at the club in February and March remain under investigation, she said.

<snip>

Source: http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050313/NEWS01/503130351/1002/NEWS

Cocky and humble

By ROBERT FRIEDMAN, Times Deputy Editor of Editorials
Published March 13, 2005

We have two late-arriving bulletins from the Say Wha? update desk:

* The New Mexico Senate's Conservation Committee voted 6-2 last month to reject legislation that would have banned cockfighting in the state. The vote effectively decided the issue for at least another year, leaving New Mexico and Louisiana as the only states in the union where you can still attend an old-fashioned, legal cockfight.

As noted in the Feb. 6 installment of Say Wha?, New Mexico had been under intense pressure from Hollywood animal-rights activists led by Pamela Anderson to ban the alleged sport. But after three hours of what the Associated Press called "impassioned testimony," the Senate committee stood up to the outside agitators.

Sen. Phil Griego called the attempt to ban cockfighting a "ridiculous" waste of legislators' time. "This is what you call a rural vs. urban issue," Griego said. "You open this up, and you'll have the same people testifying that rodeos are bad, that the way we brand our cows is bad, the way we dehorn our cows is bad, the way we castrate our cows is bad. . . . To do away with cockfighting is to do away with a major portion of our heritage."

To which Ruth White of Socorro County replied: "It is part of my cultural heritage to have slaves."

Other speakers seemed less interested in defending cockfighting than in defending the honor of their state in the face of Hollywood's attacks. "We do not claim to be without faults," Luis Sevilla, an engineering student at New Mexico Tech, said of his fellow New Mexicans, "but we do claim that cockfighting is not one of them."

Which raises the disturbing question of what the people of New Mexico do consider a fault.

But the real highlight of the committee hearing came when the procockfighting forces produced a celebrity capable of neutralizing the star power Pamela Anderson had brought to the other side:

"My objection to this bill is that I feel we have enough government in our lives, enough control over us and . . . enough bureaucracy," said Wilford Brimley, the crusty actor and TV pitchman. Brimley told the Senate committee he moved to New Mexico because "the sacred rights and integrity of the individual are put to the forefront" there.

Brimley, who can fake rustic sincerity better than anyone else in show business, already has proved he can sell everything from cereal to insurance. He probably could help his adopted state sell cockfighting, too. Imagine the slogan possibilities:

Wagering on fights to the death between crazed birds with razors strapped to their legs - it's the right thing to do.

Or,

Cockfight fever - catch it! And maybe avian flu, too!

Or,

New Mexico: Where the rights are sacred and the roosters are scared.

<snip>
 
Source: http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/13/Columns/Cocky_and_humble.shtml
 

Does This Give You Some Idea What Lengths The AR Plan To Go To Create A New Class Of Criminal?
 
........perhaps you can ask your publisher to move it to a more appropriate section of the paper, for example, the crime report.......
 
 
PETA, save your harassment

March 13, 2005
 

Fourteen years ago, when Karin Robertson was 10 years old and living in Culver, Ind., she went fishing at nearby Lake Maxinkuckee. Robertson asked her father if hooked fish feel pain.

"He kind of skirted around the issue," she said. "He never let them flop around in the boat, so there was no reason to get upset about it."

It wasn't unusual for her dad to stop the car and allow the two of them to help a turtle or snake cross a busy road.

She asked herself if she would help a turtle or snake in danger, why would she hook a fish in the mouth just for the joy of fishing?

Robertson read books that convinced her fish feel pain; that fishing is a cruel recreational sport. "I was really surprised to learn that I had been contributing," she said.

Robertson quit fishing. Now, she wants everybody else to lay down their rods and reels and join her as she manages People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' "Fish Empathy Project," an attempt to eliminate recreational fishing.

That project begins with eliminating fishing columns in newspapers, she said from PETA's Norfolk, Va., office.

Unlike her father, she isn't skirting around the pain-or-no-pain issue. In an e-mail to The Star earlier this month, Robertson wrote:

"On behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the world's largest animal rights organization, and our more than 800,000 members and supporters, I'm writing to suggest that it is time to abandon your paper's fishing column.

"And, as no one in their right mind can dispute, fish feel pain as animals do. Please consider this: You wouldn't dedicate space in your paper to the recreational abuse of dogs and cats, yet the fishing column encourages cruelty to animals every bit as capable of feeling pain as any dog or cat.

"If you're not ready to cancel the fishing column, perhaps you can ask your publisher to move it to a more appropriate section of the paper, for example, the crime report or obituaries, where it will blend right in."

Robertson claims evidence from animal behaviorists shows fish are sensitive, intelligent and interesting individuals.

I confess that outdoor columnists occasionally keep company with people who wear baseball caps with "PETA" written on the front and "People Eat Tasty Animals" stitched on the back. But that doesn't mean that we endorse cruelty to animals.

The anglers I know treat fish humanely. People who write about fishing in Indiana detest cruelty to animals. Currently, newspaper outdoor columnists and editorial writers throughout the state are calling for a ban on the commercial fenced hunting of game.

I spent several hours last week reading studies, pro and con, on whether a fish feels pain. A University of Liverpool (England) scientist, Lynne Sneddon, believes that fish "likely" feel pain.

But James D. Rose, of the University of Wyoming, contends that fish don't have the capacity to experience humanlike pain.

It has not been proven conclusively that fish feel pain.

I respect Robertson in her work to prevent cruelty to animals. She believes in what she's doing.

In a 30-minute conversation, we agreed to disagree on whether fish feel pain. People come to their own conclusions on what is, and is not, cruelty to creatures.

As for PETA's attempt to eliminate sport fishing, Robertson concedes, "We are definitely swimming upstream."

The first stroke of that swim is trying to get newspapers to sweep fishing columns into the dustbin of history.

Robertson proposes that instead of writing about fishing, outdoor columnists write stories urging people to just take a pleasure boat ride or to take a walk in the woods.

But to get the boat to water, wouldn't folks have to splatter some creatures on a vehicle grill and window?

Couldn't a raccoon, opossum or deer run in front of the vehicle and get injured as they often do?

And couldn't the boat prop hit fish, like so many of them do, and cause the fish pain?

As for taking a walk in the woods, aren't there tiny creatures hidden beneath the leaves and on the trails that could be stepped on and hurt? Like fish, we would be unable to hear them cry out in pain, wouldn't we?

In Indiana, there is a law that prohibits people from harassing anglers.

I propose an amendment that PETA not be allowed to harass fishing columnists.

We feel your pain, PETA. Trust us, we painfully feel it.

Skip Hess is the outdoors columnist for The Indianapolis Star. Contact him at (317) 862-1994 or via e-mail at skiphess.outdoor@sbcglobal.net .

 
Source: http://www.indystar.com/articles/2/228882-7762-036.html