High Stakes Fight Looms on Savage Practice of Animal Fighting
Farm bill set for action in Senate Agriculture Committee on Thursday
- by Wayne Pacelle
Dogfighting and cockfighting deliver animal cruelty and other forms of mayhem, including murder, every day of every year somewhere around the world.
They’re global organized crime rackets.
And our undercover investigations put the United States at the very center of the global trade in fighting animals. Dogfighters and cockfighters sell the best “fighting stock” to 30 countries in the world. It all starts in remote parts of Oklahoma, Kentucky, Puerto Rico, Guam — in American hamlets, rural post offices, and airports.
The illegal haul of money from the sale of fighting animals — the winners of derbies and other competitions or their offspring — is in the billions.
A decade ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said there might be 24 million fighting birds in the United States. The number of fighting dogs is surely in the hundreds of thousands.
It all must be dismantled.
And we have just the plan: the Fighting Inhumane Gambling and High-Risk Trafficking (FIGHT) Act of 2025, S. 1454/H.R. 3946, along with a complementary bill, H.R. 7371, the No Flight, No Fight Act.
This Thursday, the Senate Agriculture Committee will consider amendments to the Farm bill. The FIGHT Act is one of several crucial animal protection measures on deck, along with amendments, we hope, to end horse slaughter in America and close the door on the dying greyhound racing industry.
Demonstrating that the organization is unable to distinguish between responsible animal use and malicious cruelty, the American Farm Bureau Federation is opposing the FIGHT Act, along with seeking to nullify state laws to promote farm animal well-being.
Congress Can Dismantle the Trafficking Pipeline
It’s time to send the dogfighting and cockfighting networks, and their allies in the Farm Bureau, a message that our nation won’t tolerate their contempt for animal welfare and the rule of law.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., a member of the committee, plans to offer the FIGHT Act, which he co-leads with Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. Nearly a third of the senators are on record supporting the FIGHT Act. And with almost 1,200 endorsing agencies and organizations — including the National Sheriffs’ Association, the American Gaming Association, the Center for a Humane Economy, and the Ohio Poultry Association — it is one of the most important opportunities Congress has had in years to attack organized animal fighting where it is most vulnerable: the commercial pipeline that allows dogfighters and cockfighters to profit by buying and selling fighting animals across the nation and around the world.
Dogfighters and cockfighters breed fighting animals and stage fights. And then they advertise their wins at derbies, tout the bloodlines of their animals, and ship them to their equally ruthless customers and coreligionists.
If we cut off the commerce, we cripple the enterprise — centered right here in America.
Think of the animal fighting crime networks in the same light as human traffickers and drug dealers, and the cartels and other organized criminals at the heart of this illicit trade.
Twenty-Four Years of Federal Failure
Congress outlawed interstate and foreign commerce in fighting animals nearly a quarter-century ago.
Yet trafficking pipelines remain untouched by federal law enforcement.
Animal Wellness investigations, with partners at SHARK, have documented major cockfighting figures delivering dozens of birds at rural post offices. One well-known cockfighter sends birds via USPS to border towns in Texas, and Mexican cartels run up and get the birds across the border. One of our investigators went to the World Slasher Cup in Manila and documented 15 American cockfighters illegally transporting their birds to this event.
In every single case, federal authorities were asleep at the switch.
Fighting animals are openly advertised on cockfighting websites and social media, boxed up, and mailed across state lines in direct violation of federal law.
Yet there hasn’t been one federal enforcement case by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in the 24 years since Congress outlawed the interstate shipment of fighting animals.
Not one.
Congress passed the law. The trafficking continues in plain sight. The smugglers keep making money. And the agency charged with policing the mail has failed to bring a single case.
The FIGHT Act provides badly needed enforcement tools to finally attack this illegal marketplace.
Airlines Should Not Be Getaway Cars for Animal Smugglers
The other major commercial pathway is commercial air transport.
For years, our investigators have documented American cockfighters exporting fighting birds to more than 30 nations where organized criminal networks profit from cockfighting and illegal gambling.
They revealed that Korean Air was one of the principal transporters of fighting birds from the United States to the Philippines. We estimate that as many as 40,000 American fighting birds were entering that nation each year. With many birds selling for $2,000 or more, that represents an illegal trade approaching $80 million annually.
After we presented Korean Air with overwhelming evidence, the airline agreed to stop accepting direct shipments destined for the Philippines.
But traffickers immediately began rerouting birds through Vietnam before completing the journey. And Korean Air has refused to stop participating in these felony-level offenses.
Other international carriers, including Turkish Airlines and Qatar Airways, continue to provide cargo services that traffickers can exploit.
These companies should not serve as the getaway cars for organized animal fighters.
There is no legitimate agricultural reason to spend roughly $180 to fly an ordinary rooster halfway around the world. These transport expenses only make sense because these are specialized fighting birds destined for cockfighting pits where they command enormous prices.
Animal Fighting Is Organized Crime
We’ve seen cartel massacres at cockfighting arenas in Mexico and Ecuador. Mass murders in the Philippines.
It’s American animal fighters who are consorting with these criminal networks.
That’s why America’s law enforcement community has rallied behind the FIGHT Act.
There are 500 law enforcement agencies backing the FIGHT Act — including the Alabama Sheriffs Association, the Major County Sheriffs of America, the National Sheriffs’ Association, the Small and Rural County Sheriffs Association, and the Wyoming Sheriffs and Deputies Association.
Sheriffs, prosecutors, and investigators understand that dismantling animal fighting also dismantles criminal organizations that traffic drugs, launder money, and terrorize communities.
Will senators on the Agriculture Committee listen to America’s law enforcement personnel? To hundreds of the nation’s leading animal welfare groups left to pick up the pieces of animals torn apart and bled out in staged animal fights?
Will they also listen to America’s poultry industry — to Rose Acre Farms, the Ohio Poultry Association, the Indiana Poultry Association, the United Egg Producers, the North Central Poultry Association, and other FIGHT Act agricultural endorsers concerned about the spread of disease from the unregulated movement of fighting game fowl and poor biosecurity of cockfighting farms and derbies?
Today, I hope you’ll contact your two U.S. senators and urge them to support the FIGHT Act, led by Senators John Kennedy and Cory Booker, and to include the FIGHT Act in the Farm bill.
Tell them that organized animal fighting is not just an animal cruelty issue. It is an international crime racket. A threat to our communities. A zoonotic disease and public health crisis in the making.
It is time for Congress to shut down all of this, including the trafficking pipelines that enable the profits to flow to criminals.
Wayne Pacelle, president of the Center for a Humane Economy and Animal Wellness Action, is the author of two New York Times bestselling books, “The Bond” and “The Humane Economy.”
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