Animal suffering and cockfighting
Frank Loftus/The HSUS
Even birds who aren't killed during cockfights suffer terribly. Most roosters on a gamefowl farm live tied to a stake, barrel or small wooden hut. They are often injected with steroids and adrenaline-boosting drugs and, for two to three weeks prior to a fight, are kept in a small dark box to isolate them from other animals and deprive them of stimuli and natural behavior.
Regardless of how exhausted or injured they become during a fight, the birds cannot escape from the fighting pit. Common injuries include punctured lungs, broken bones and pierced eyes, yet they are forced to continue to fight. The razor-sharp steel blades or "gaffs" (which resemble 3-inch-long, curved ice picks) tied to the birds' legs are so sharp and dangerous that cockfighters themselves have been killed when accidentally slashed by their own birds.
Saved from a horrible fate
Warning: Graphic video of animal fighting in America.
Meredith Lee/Humane World for Animals
Breeding criminal activity
As federal and state law enforcement can attest, cockfights are often associated with other criminal activities such as illegal gambling, drug trafficking, gang activity and illegal weapon sales. Federal investigations have uncovered international drug cartels running sophisticated cockfighting operations as a means to distribute heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and opioids across the United States.
Gambling is the norm at cockfights and the primary reason the fights occur. Thousands of dollars can exchange hands as spectators and animal owners wager on the fate of the birds. Because of the large sums of money involved, cockfight-related assaults, home invasions and even murders are not uncommon. Cockfight derbies often attract hundreds of people engaging in a range of criminal activity which creates a dangerous situation for law enforcement officers, residents of the community and all involved.
The presence of children at these events is particularly disturbing—some parents make cockfights a family event, bringing picnic blankets and lunch which normalizes violence and teaches children to tolerate, and even celebrate, the suffering of animals.
Kathy Milani/Humane World for Animals
Fighting for their lives
How can we get cockfighting taken more seriously? In addition to the cruelty to gamecocks, criminal activity is common at cockfights, including drug trafficking, illegal weapons sales, assaults and thefts.
Common excuses from cockfighters
Birds are natural fighters
While birds will fight over food, territory or mates, such fights are generally only to establish dominance within a group (the pecking order) and seldom result in serious injury. This natural behavior is quite different from what happens in staged cockfights, where the animal’s will to survive is exploited. Winning gamebirds are a result of artificial selection—intentionally bred for maximum aggression.
Cockfights are part of our culture/heritage
While it is true that cockfighting has been practiced for centuries in various countries, including the United States, "old" does not necessarily mean right or even acceptable. Heritage cannot be a defense for inexcusable, intentional abuse for the sake of entertainment. Cockfights are centered on animal suffering and apologists try to dress it up as tradition to disguise and excuse the egregious cruelty they inflict. By passing strong laws against animal fighting, federal and state governments have declared that it no longer has a place in our society.
Cockfights and the spread of disease
Those who raise and sell roosters for fighting maintain hundreds, sometimes thousands, of birds—creating an ideal environment for the spread of disease. Birds are regularly sold and transported across state lines to fight in bloody cockfighting matches with no regulation or oversight. The fights themselves involve uniquely unsanitary practices such as cockfighters handling bloody, mutilated birds and putting their mouths over injured roosters’ beaks to suck fluids from their airways.
How we combat cockfighting
Humane World for Animals, previously called the Humane Society of the U.S. and Humane Society International, works every day to combat and end this cruel practice.
Humane World for Animals
Meredith Lee/The HSUS
Meredith Lee/The HSUS
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Jean Chung/For Humane World for Animals