There's a cockfighting lobby?

Posted by R. Neal

As part of the government's all-out assault on bird flu, the Senate is waiting for the House to pass legislation that further restricts importing of fighting cocks and transportation of same across state lines. So what's the holdup? Apparently, House Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner thinks it's a waste of time:

But the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has not brought the bill, which has passed the Senate, to a vote. Cockfighting is banned in every state except Louisiana and New Mexico.

"That's a bit of a stretch to say that the animal fighting bill should be an important part of any avian flu efforts," said Jeff Lungren, spokesman for Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.

Issues such as the Patriot Act and immigration have kept the committee busy, Lungren said, who played down the idea that the bill would do much to keep bird flu from reaching the U.S.

Maybe so, but according to the article Sensenbrenner supported the legislation last year. What changed his mind?

Last year, U.S. cockfighters formed Citizens for Preserving Historic Animal Use, which spent $60,000 lobbying against the legislation from mid-2004 through mid-2005, federal records show.

[..]

Cockfighters also established a political action committee, Citizens for the Humane and Ethical Treatment of Animals, or CHETA, which gave $1,000 each to then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, and Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas.

It sounds like the cockfighting lobby has emerged as a powerful special interest in Washington. Then there's this:

Last year in Thailand, an 18-year-old man who raised fighting cocks died from avian flu. According to health authorities, he would suck mucus and blood from his injured roosters' beaks, a practice not uncommon in that part of the world.

Also, the fights themselves can spread disease because the birds slash each other in the pit.

A recent report by the New England Journal of Medicine found that most bird flu victims in Southeast Asia were people who had direct contact with birds, including people who handled and groomed fighting cocks.

I wonder if they are aware of this up in Cocke County (no, seriously, I am not making that up) Tennessee, where heavily armed FBI and ATF and U.S. Marshals swooped in with black helicopters and SWAT teams to bust up a huge cockfighting operation earlier this year? I hope those guys were practicing safe cockfighting. And does Rick Santorum know about this man-on-rooster-beak action? Maybe we need a Constitutional Amendment to protect the sanctity of poultry breeding...

OK, then.