{"id":294471,"date":"2025-10-11T11:00:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T11:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/294471\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T11:00:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T11:00:19","slug":"dallas-is-a-cockfighting-hotbed-animal-rights-advocates-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/294471\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas is a Cockfighting Hotbed, Animal Rights Advocates Say"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before 2023, roosters didn\u2019t crow much in Dallas. Ordinances banned fowl ownership <\/a>within city limits, but nowadays, Dallasites across the city rise with the sun and the birds that greet it with their shrill song. It\u2019s easy to ignore the cry. They\u2019re just chickens. But when the neighbors have a flock large enough to feed a small nation, when droves of shady figures arrive at night, it may not be a case of bird enthusiasts saving some money on eggs, but a cockfighting ring<\/a>. Dallas is a hotbed for them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cockfighting busts are far from rare in North Texas, and cracking down on the parties involved has been a large-scale effort from animal rights groups, law enforcement agencies and legislators. Still, cockfighting remains a problem, but activists say they\u2019re witnessing a slow shift and plan on applying more pressure until cockfighting penalties are increased and support for the bloodsport is fully drained.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c[Cockfighters] are now confronting a legal landscape that I\u2019ve worked to build with colleagues over the last 30 years, where cockfighting is a federal felony,\u201d said Wayne Pacelle, CEO of Animal Wellness Action. \u201cIt\u2019s a federal felony to possess animals for fighting. It\u2019s a misdemeanor to attend a cockfight. It\u2019s a felony to ship them or transport them anywhere. It\u2019s a felony to ship and make the fighting implements that they attach to the animal\u2019s legs. Oklahoma has a great state law; Texas needs to be improved.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pacelle\u2019s organization released a report detailing <\/a>its findings after five years of underground investigations into what it calls \u201cthe Texoma Cockfighting Corridor.\u201d The corridor runs between Tulsa and Dallas and is \u201ca hub for illegal cockfighting operators.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cockfighting is illegal in both Texas and Oklahoma, a change that occurred within the last 25 years. But indeed, attending a cockfight in Texas is still only a misdemeanor, and recent efforts to change that, led by Dallas Rep. Rafael Anchia, made little progress in the Legislature. The bill was never scheduled for a House reading, effectively leaving it dead in the water. But Pacelle says he\u2019s not swayed by the bill\u2019s failure, and that animal rights movements are slow-moving and require significant efforts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy are we tolerating this? Why isn\u2019t anybody doing anything about this? Like a lot of other animal issues, it took us hammering away in order to gain awareness of the problem,\u201d he said. \u201cFor years, it was like we were applying the heat, but the water wasn\u2019t boiling.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fight in Texas Stalls, But It\u2019s Not Over <\/p>\n

While Anchia\u2019s bill didn\u2019t go as far as he had hoped, another bill is moving at the federal level, and it has the support of one of the most powerful Texans, Sen. John Cornyn.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Fighting Inhumane Gambling and High-Risk Trafficking (FIGHT) Act of 2025<\/a> would strengthen various existing animal fighting laws. Cornyn and nine other senators, six of whom are Democrats, co-sponsored the bill, a testament to the issue\u2019s bipartisanship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most significant change would be prohibiting the shipment of mature roosters, chickens older than six months, through the United States Postal Service. Similar laws that ban the shipment of dogs across state lines already exist to prevent the spread of dogfighting. But Pacelle says this new change would hit the Dallas cockfighters especially hard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Through their investigations, the Animal Wellness Action unveiled an American gamefowl breeding company based in Celina that ships dozens of birds from Dallas Fort Worth International Airport through Korea Air to the Philippines, where cockfighting is legal, popular and codified by the national government. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve uncovered this Texas livestock shipping company just north of Dallas\u2026 We are definitely going to address that issue in a very proactive way,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I think the key is that when we learn of operations that have fighting birds and when we learn about fighting pits, law enforcement comes down on these people like a ton of bricks.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Shipping birds specifically for fighting is a felony, but shipping birds for something like breeding is completely legal, and without the spurs or gaffs tied to the ankles of chickens<\/a>, it\u2019s pretty easy to say you\u2019re boxing them up for a luxury vacation in Manila.\u00a0And if you wanted to, you could send the gaffs, even though it is illegal to ship them for the intention of fighting, in a separate shipment, call them \u201cantiques,\u201d and no one could stop you. Legal loopholes like these allow for cockfighting to persist, but proponents still claim cockfighting is an integral part of their American family history.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a fourth-generation gamefowl farmer, and when I grew up, everything was legal,\u201d said the president of the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission, Anthony Devore. \u201cTo be able to say, I\u2019m gonna take your heritage away from you because I don\u2019t like you or I don\u2019t like what you stand for, that\u2019s my heritage and I\u2019m not breaking the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission was a PAC that endorsed a small group of Oklahoma politicians that opposed strengthening existing cockfighting laws. In September, the commission was fined $10,000 for violating campaign donation rules and ordered to dissolve after DeVore was caiight redhanded at a cockfight. <\/p>\n

With the loudest proponent of cockfighting taken down a notch, Pacelle is looking forward to further bi-partisan legislative actions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll be sure to help in the state Capitol in Austin when the next session gets going, but in the interim, we\u2019re really focused on passing the FIGHT Act,\u201d said Pacelle.\u00a0 \u201cSen. Cornyn has co-sponsored, and I\u2019m hoping that Senator Cruz will. Once you have people like Cruz and Cornyn..\u00a0 it sends a signal to the state lawmakers, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s the right position for conservative Republicans to be on it.\u201d <\/p>\n

About More Than Just Chickens<\/p>\n

Cockfighting, on its face, is morally reprehensible, but it also moves in tandem with other serious crimes. The rings that have been tarred and feathered with the blood and guts of steroid-pumped chickens are also the scene of underground gambling, drug trafficking and other organized crimes. Pacelle says this is what is creating a shift in the perspective of lawmakers and law enforcers, and it\u2019s the reason Anchia initially filed his bill.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the unlawful organized crime activity that we\u2019re really targeting,\u201d Anchia said in January before the bill failed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pacelle says Cornyn is a big win for the FIGHT Act, but the biggest win for anti-cockfighting legislation is an endorsement from the Sheriff\u2019s Association of Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s now becoming understood within the law enforcement community that cockfighting comes with a crime wave,\u201d he said. \u201cThe first wave is the is the animal cruelty crime, but all the other waves come in; the narcotics, the illegal gambling, the money laundering, the violence. It\u2019s all commingled. You do not have upstanding citizens who are engaged in cockfighting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pacelle is eager to see more Texans join the fight against cockfighting because, he says, the Lone Star State might be able to help bring an end to the bloodsport.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTexas is a crucial player in our efforts to eliminate cockfighting across the nation and the world because U.S. cockfighters are the breeding ground for cockfighters throughout the world,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to have strong laws in Texas. It\u2019s imperative and we have to have enforcement. It\u2019s going to all start to unravel for these people if we\u2019re able to succeed here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before 2023, roosters didn\u2019t crow much in Dallas. Ordinances banned fowl ownership within city limits, but nowadays, Dallasites…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":294472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[9600,5229,143194,1596,358,7376,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-294471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-activism","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-animals-wildlife","11":"tag-dallas","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-texas-legislature","14":"tag-tx","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}