AR-News: National Chicken Council Calls for Legislation to Stop Cockfighting

[Political Animal]

This article is from The Hill, April 7th edition.  The
Hill is a newspaper distributed to those that follow
politics in Washington, DC.

BUSINESS & LOBBYING 
 

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. 
 
 
file photo 
 
Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), a veterinarian, has a bill
that would make cockfighting a felony.
 

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“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.”
 
 


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