The World Slasher Cup, an official international cockfighting tournament known as the “Olympics of Cockfighting”, has started today.
During this weeklong torture event, hundreds of cockfighting matches would be held until only one human would be declared the winner, and after thousands of birds were lost.

The image of cockfighting as an illegal, small scale activity that secretly takes place in shady places with a few dozen people who come to gamble a few bucks, is very inaccurate. In reality it is a highly organized industry which runs billions of dollars every year and is legal in many countries such as: the Philippines, where The World Slasher Cup is being held and where this blood sport is a national sport, Thailand, Dominican Republic, Peru, Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia, Ecuador, France, parts of Spain, Indonesia, and etc. In some other countries despite that it is illegal, the law is not enforced and cockfighting is popular, like in India and in 8 states of the United States where cockfighting is enforced only with a small fine.

Besides the numerous illegal cockfights being held in it, the United States is also highly involved in this blood sport by becoming a global power in breeding and exporting birds to other countries. Among the tens of thousands of people attending The World Slasher Cup are American professional breeders, as breeding the kinds of birds who are popular in cockfighting is not illegal in the U.S. That is as long as it is not for fighting purposes, however, whether for illegal events held within the U.S. or to be exported to other countries, clearly, these birds are bred for cockfighting. It is estimated that every year in the US, tens of thousands of birds are bred and sent to 25 countries.

The world capital of cockfighting is the host of The World Slasher Cup, the Philippines, where it is a national sport with 4 TV-programs broadcasting fights live, 10 cockfighting-magazines, and more than 2,500 cockfighting dedicated stadiums. The estimations are that about 30 million roosters are murdered each year in the Philippines alone.

But the cruelty of cockfighting starts much earlier.
Until their first fight, which in some places is when the roosters reach 8 months and in other  places 2 years, the roosters are kept under a training regime to increase their aggression, speed, and balance. The training includes attaching weights to the roosters’ legs, making them fly high, for example by throwing them up, and “practice fights” with other roosters. When they don’t train, many of these birds are tethered by one leg to their small plastic barrel if not a tiny wire cage.
In many cases humans cut off the roosters’ combs, wattles, and earlobes so they would have the least possible “weak spots” during the fight.

During the “practice fights”, gloves are attached on the roosters’ natural spurs so they would not be injured. In the real fight, in most places, 1 to 2.5 inches long knives are attached to their legs instead of their natural spurs. This makes the injuries much more lethal with usually one dead rooster and sometimes both. In the places where the birds fight with their natural spurs, the fights take much longer, as they are still to the death. Either way the roosters suffer immensely.

A cockfight usually results in the death of one of the birds, sometimes both. A typical cockfight can last anywhere from several minutes to more than half an hour. “Winners” as well as “losers” suffer severe injuries including broken wings, punctured lungs, and gouged eyes.

We can’t seriously discuss the end of speciesism while even these practices still exist.
It is not that they are worse or more important than any other exploitation industry, however it is obvious that from society’s point of view, and in many places even from a legal point of view, they are much less accepted. As opposed to eating birds, most humans are against cockfighting, yet dozens of millions of birds still suffer every year because millions of humans like to watch them suffer. So when will the suffering of the billions of birds who are eaten by the vast majority of humans ever end?

Considering that we are still fighting against something like cockfighting, how could it be that you still don’t get that this world would never be fair, egalitarian and non-violent, and that giving humans more and more chances to change is in fact the greater violence?
Until when will we fight against things that should have never even been imagined by anyone, not to mention ever existed and even more unbelievable that still exist?

Obviously any cultural practice that is torturous for other sentient beings must be eradicated.
However, the fact that something that is obviously torturous for other sentient beings and therefore must be eradicated, still exists, and the fact torturing other sentient beings plays such a significant part in human culture since forever, must make it pretty obvious that it is humanity who must be eradicated.

A world in which practices such as this still exist is a world that can never be fixed. And we all know that these are not the big issues. One of the major ones is of 66 billion birds per year. When will the end of their suffering ever come? Not before you realize that humanity is a lost cause and the only way to save these birds – 66 billion of them every year – is by removing the humans.