At the height of the holiday shopping season, the Center for a Humane Economy has tagged e-commerce giant eBay for openly and knowingly selling deadly cockfighting implements, feeding equipment to participants who torture and kill millions of animals at clandestine fighting derbies and who leave and a larger wake of crime and violence in our communities.

After a prior investigation by the Center for a Humane Economy and repeated requests by our team to remedy the illegal conduct, Etsy recently removed numerous listings for cockfighting gaffs and knives — razor-sharp weapons strapped to legs of fighting birds — from its online sales platform. Under 7 U.S.C. § 2156, it is a federal felony to possess or traffic knives or gaffs designed for the singular purposes of enhancing injurious or lethal combat in staged fights.

But e-Bay’s commerce in cockfighting contraband dwarfs that of Etsy and the organization renewed its call to company executives to comply with the law and its own company policies and take down this commercial contraband.  The larger e-commerce company continues to host sellers openly trafficking in gaffs and knives and who brandish coded marketing language, describing the weapons as “collectibles” or even as “paperweights,” that purchasers know is a masquerade.

There may be as many as 20 million fighting birds in the United State, and just about every one of these birds conscripted into staged fights is equipped with knives or curved icepicks on their legs to enhance the bloodletting.

“We’re still seeing fresh evidence of gaff sales on eBay, even after Etsy pledged to us to clean up its marketplace,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of the Center for a Humane Economy. “Allowing them to be sold on a mainstream e-commerce platform undermines the legal strictures Congressional lawmakers and the California state lawmakers imposed to stop this malicious cruelty to animals.” Congress outlawed any possession or sale of cockfighting implements in 2007 and imposed felony-level penalties for the crime.

eBay’s Willful Neglect of Illegal Commerce

Investigators say that while some eBay listings are blatant, many sellers attempt to evade detection by using euphemisms, omitting the term “cockfighting,” or categorizing the weapons under unrelated product headings. Some vendors even appear to relist items repeatedly under new descriptions after earlier takedowns — mirroring a cat-and-mouse pattern previously documented on Etsy.

“We’ve filed a series of complaints with eBay, and some individual posts do come down,” said Kevin Chambers, an investigator with Animal Wellness Action. “But the removals are inconsistent, and the overall volume of listings suggests the company is not using even basic screening tools to identify contraband. You shouldn’t be able to buy a cockfighting gaff with the same ease you buy a toaster.”

The push to shut down online trafficking of cockfighting paraphernalia comes amid an unprecedented surge of support from federal, state, and local law-enforcement leaders who have urged Congress to strengthen animal-fighting statutes. The National Sheriffs’ Association, the National District Attorneys Association, the Major County Sheriffs of America, and 38 state sheriffs’ associations and prosecutors’ associations have endorsed the FIGHT Act to further strengthen enforcement tools to rid society of staged animal fighting enterprises. That groundswell, the Center for a Humane Economy says, underscores that law enforcement understands the criminal nature of cockfighting and its menace to civil society.

“The message we’re getting from sheriffs, police chiefs, and federal agents is unmistakable—they want the tools to end animal fighting, not watch offenders exploit loopholes or lax oversight from multi-billion-dollar online companies,” Pacelle said. “Platforms like eBay have a civic and legal responsibility not to abet violent crimes.  This is not a trifling matter, but a rotten activity tied to a wide range of crimes that degrade the safety of our communities.”

The Center for a Humane Economy note that eBay’s own rules prohibit the sale of weapons linked to illegal activity. But unlike Etsy, which removed listings en masse after public exposure, eBay has not undertaken a platform-wide purge, relying instead on isolated takedowns that are followed by new postings for cockfighting commerce.

Advocates argue that the platform already has the software tools to screen for prohibited items — and that failing to do so provides cover for illegal cockfighting networks in the United States and abroad.  “Online marketplaces know that monitoring contraband is core to the integrity of their business model,” Chambers said. “If they can detect counterfeit sneakers, they can detect a cockfighting gaff.”