AR-News: (LA) Lafayette Daily Advertiser Calls for Ban on Hog vs. Dog Fights, Cockfighting

[Political Animal]

Lafayette Daily Advertiser

Hog baiting must be banned by lawmakers 
 
	 
April 28, 2004 
Issue: Another popular blood sport in Louisiana.
We Suggest: It is time for it, along with
cockfighting, to be outlawed.

Dog-fighting in Louisiana, once described by True
Magazine as “the cruelest game since Rome,” ended (or
went under deep cover) in the ’60s after a campaign by
the SPCA and exposure in the national media.
Cockfighting survived, but may be eliminated in the
current legislative session. Now, we find that there
is a third sport of substantial popularity that also
qualifies for the “blood sport” designation. Hog
Baiting may go even beyond cockfighting in its gory
mistreatment of animals. 

Hog-baiting is a sport in which domestic hogs or feral
hogs, their tusks removed with bolt-cutters, are put
in the ring with dogs who attack them fiercely. The
hogs can be injured or killed.

Defenders of the blood sport, practiced at what are
often known as hog-dog rodeos, say it is simply family
entertainment, intended to demonstrate a dog's hunting
ability. We submit that it is intended only to cause
brutal, bloody harm. 

Hog-baiting has been banned in Florida, Texas and
Alabama under cruelty to animal laws. The district
attorney in Louisiana’s East Feliciana Parish where
hog-dog rodeos are popular events, however, says he
sees no evidence that the state's cruelty to animals
law should apply.

The legislature must explicitly ban hog-baiting so
that its illegality is not subject to interpretation
or misinterpretation. 

Louisiana has great spectator sports of all kinds. We
don’t need bloody ones in which animals are maimed or
killed. 
©The Lafayette Daily Advertiser 
April 28, 2004
http://www.acadiananow.com/cgi-bin/search.pl


	
		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs  
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover