Cockfighting busts imperative given spread of bird flu threatening agriculture and human health
Yucaipa, CA — Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy applauded San Bernardino Sheriff’s Office for busting a criminal cockfighting operation yesterday in Yucaipa. The interdiction resulted in the arrest two men, detention of 33 others, and the seizure of more than 200 fighting roosters, gambling monies, and dozens of firearms yesterday, according to a news release from the sheriff’s office. Deputies dispatched to the 32000 block of Avenue E in Yucaipa on reports of illegal cockfighting there, finding an estimated 50 vehicles.
“We thank San Bernardino Sheriff’s Office for acting swiftly to bust this criminal cockfighting operation just as soon as they recognized a serious and deadly criminal operation was in progress,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action. “Cockfighting is a crime of animal cruelty, bound up with illegal gambling, drugs, and violence that tears apart our safe communities. The illegal sport is a breeding ground for avian influenza, known as bird flu that poses risk to human health, and we should exhibit no tolerance for this vicious crime.”
Cockfighting is bound up with other criminal activities, and that is the case with this interdiction in Yucaipa. In November 2024, cockfighting enthusiast and son-in-law of cartel leader “El Mencho” arrested in Riverside County.
California banned cockfighting in 1905, but these staged battles remain the state’s most widespread form of illegal animal cruelty. San Bernardino also has an ordinance restricting the possession of large numbers of roosters on a property, precisely to discouraging cockfighters from raising, selling, and fighting animals in the nation’s largest county by physical geography.
Cockfighting is known to spread the two key poultry diseases in the nation: virulent Newcastle Disease and also “bird flu,” known as H5N1. H5N1is spreading rapidly across the country and the epidemic is particularly widespread now in California, with dairies across the Central Valley affected. Experts now report detection of H5N1 in nearly 70 human cases in the United States. The nature of this virus and its evolution in humans has grave implications for more severe outbreaks.
These discoveries, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, raise vast concerns about the evolving nature of H5N1 and its increasing threat to human health, as well as farm animals, wildlife and even pets, as cats have reportedly now died from the strain found in raw pet food.
The extent of the severity of the death toll is 135 million poultry that have died from bird flu or been culled on 1400 commercial poultry farms and ‘backyard’ farms in all 50 states. The virus has also infected more than 900 dairy cattle herds, affecting one million of the nine million cows in the national herd. California has also had a series of outbreaks of virulent Newcastle Disease.
The smuggling of cockfighting birds from Mexico was the cause of 10 of 15 outbreaks of virulent Newcastle Disease to hit the U.S. in recent decades. The cockfighting-spawned epidemic of virulent Newcastle Disease (vND) in southern California in the early 1970s resulted in an inflation-adjusted cost of $337 million) to the United States; the 2002-03 came in at an inflation-adjusted cost of $246 million, and a massive outbreak in 2018-20 (at a very conservative cost estimate of $72 million).
These outbreaks result in mass depopulation of birds resulting in inhumane deaths of animals, disruptions of supply chains, and increases in egg prices for consumers.
Animal Wellness Action is leading efforts to pass the FIGHT Act in Congress. The FIGHT Act would enhance enforcement of these laws by banning online gambling on animal fights; halting the shipment of mature roosters (chickens only) through the U.S. Postal Service (it is already illegal to ship dogs through the mail); allowing a civil right of action for private citizens against animal fighters after proper notice to federal authorities; and enhancing criminal forfeiture penalties to include real property for those convicted of animal fighting crimes.