Cracking Down on Cockfighting

They fight in octagonal or circular pits, with knives or gaffs strapped to their back legs in place of the sawed-off spurs with which roosters naturally do battle. They start on lines drawn in the dirt, eight feet apart. They're bred for aggression and fed steroids and stimulants to make them more hostile. Feathers fly, and one bird winds up dead.

Cockfighting, also known as "cocking," is a bloodsport that dates to colonial times in the United States and has offered gamblers a venue for betting around the world. But a string of federal arrests in Washington and Oregon last week should serve as notice to the organizers of rooster "derbies" across this country, authorities say. Armed with a law passed by Congress in 2006 that bans the interstate transport of "gamefowl" for cockfighting, federal agents raided 28 homes and barns from southern Oregon to Puget Sound on March 15, finding more than 700 roosters in one Oregon county, $100,000 in cash, 50 guns, 2.5 pounds of methamphetamine, 1.5 pounds of cocaine, 6 pounds of marijuana and 48 marijuana plants. The agents arrested 51 people accused of sponsoring or participating in the brutal sport, and are looking for 12 more suspects. The arrests culminate a two-year investigation dubbed "Operation Red Rooster" in Oregon and "Operation Tattered Wing" in Washington that involved hundreds of law enforcement officers and other officials.

Headed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of the Inspector General, the work was that agency's third major investigation of animal fighting in the past two years, the second prosecution in the nation after last year's passage of the Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act, signed into law May 3, 2007.

"Animal fighting can certainly develop into a large criminal enterprise," says James Mendenhall, who headed the Agriculture investigation. "The OIG will continue to pursue substantive allegations of animal fighting."

The arrests came just a year after Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick's dogfighting charges, which heightened the public's awareness of animal fighting, giving lawmakers the necessary urgency to get a bill passed and authorities the teeth to make criminal charges a worthy pursuit.

Animal rights activists rejoiced at the investigation, which they see as a warning to cockers who continue to defy laws that make the sport a felony in 37 states and a misdemeanor in the rest. Dozens of Web sites direct gamefowl enthusiasts to matches. The tagline at http://www.gamerooster.com is "No sport can be higher than the class of people that support it. Do your part to popularize cocking." The site offers gamefowl hatching eggs for as little as $9.99 for a half dozen. Other sites offer links to the "truth" about animal rights activists and a virulent defense of the sport, including claims that the birds enjoy fighting and that the tradition is steeped in history.

In Louisiana, the last state to officially ban the sport in 2007, only one lawmaker voted against the bill that would make the practice illegal: Rep. Elbert Lee Guillory, a Democrat from Opelousas. Guillory stands by his protest vote.