A glimpse of the cockfighting industry

The arena is crowded, smoky and loud. A din of shouting and cheering rises and falls, punctuated now and then by the crowing of roosters. Fluorescent lights, not all of them working, hang from a low, yellow particleboard ceiling. Light snow is falling inside, and it takes a moment to realize that it is comprised of finely chopped chicken feathers rising from a small cock pit in the arena's center. There, two roosters-one a deep rusty red, the other a muted gray-rise in a flurry of wings and shuffling feet, flailing under the watchful eyes of their handlers and a referee. The birds come down, tangled like boxers in a clinch, and fall as one on their sides, still flailing, as the crowd cheers.

"Handle!" Yells the referee, but it is nearly impossible to hear him. Each handler takes hold of “his” bird. The red rooster's gaff-a thin, curved, 2-inch spike attached to the rear of each bird's leg-has sunk deep into the gray rooster's thigh, and the red bird's handler reaches in and works it loose. Each man picks “his” rooster up for a 20-second break. The referee scrapes two lines in the clay with the stick he carries and yells, "Pit!" Each man sets “his” bird behind one of the lines and let go.

They tangle once more, and this time the gaff is hung in the gray's wing. The handlers disengage the panting birds and the referee points them toward one of three pits. The fight will finish there, clearing the main pit for a fresh pair. High turnover, which keeps the cheering and betting levels high, is the aim. Blood drips from the gray rooster's leg as the men and birds leave the main pit.

The fact that some people still take pleasure in watching two animals forced to fight for their lives in a pit, so they can gamble on the outcome, says something very clear about the chances for a real revolution in the way humans see nonhuman animals.
It is not just about the people directly involved in Cockfighting. It says something about the society that tolerates it.

An Institutionalized Industry

The image of cockfighting as an illegal, small scale activity that is secretly taking place in shady places with a few dozen people who come to gamble a few bucks, is very partial. 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, 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 out of the 50 states of the United States where it is enforced only with a relatively small fine.

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

Cockfighting is a big business. There are breeding farms for roosters who are specially bred for aggression. Until their first fight, which in some places is when they reach 8 months and in others 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.

You can’t seriously discuss how to end speciesism while even cockfighting still exists. It is not that cockfighting is worse or more important than any other exploitation industry, however it is obvious that from society’s point of view, cockfighting is much less accepted. As opposed to the dairy industry for example, which most humans don’t understand or are not even aware of the ethical opposition to it, most humans are against cockfighting. Yet dozens of millions still suffer every year because millions of humans like to watch them suffer.

Cockfights, Bullfights and dogfights still exist, in spite of the campaigns that the animal rights organizations run against them for decades, and in spite that most humans are against them.
And if this is not enough for a little and publicly unaccepted industry such as cockfighting, when would the meat chicken industry, which is more than 66 billion suffering animals per year industry, ever stop?