This is a direct quote from a favorite colleague’s recent email. Apparently, New Mexico banned cockfighting last spring, and, finally, on July 12, Louisiana joined the civilized world and banned it, too. Cockfighting will now be illegal in all 50 states (in July 2008, one year after Louisiana's law was signed).

I’ll admit that my colleague’s email was delivered cheekily. Not that he disapproves of cockfighting bans—just that it took this long to ban an inhumane bloodsport better suited to a backwards Brazilian penal colony in 1900 than to anywhere in the US in 2007. And here’s where I apologize to Brazil.

In case you think  cockfighting has nothing to do with everyday veterinary medicine, I’ll give you three reasons why I’d disagree:

1-Becase this sport is more prevalent in areas where animal attitudes are less welfare-centric. In fact, there is a correlation between pet shops and animal bloodsports. Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana and Florida share a higher abundance of pet shops and more cockfighting than most other states (HSUS, 2007). Pet shops, in case I need to tell you, generally serve to create and perpetuate chronically abusive conditions for animals (which I have to deal with on a regular, if not daily, basis). 

The attitudes that allow both “industries” to persist—if not flourish—are similar. So it is that vets in communities rife with cockfighting face challenging cultural attitudes when it comes to even the most routine pet care.

2-Because most everyday veterinarians (especially those traumatized by roosters at a young age) know how horrific cockfights can get. So after taking an oath to champion animal welfare in our communities, most vets are easily infuriated by the continued presence of this so-called sport and the lack of enforcement for backyard fighting.

3-And, finally, if ever we needed evidence to prove how close this sport comes to our daily vet lives, our hospital’s got it: dead chickens in the dumpster. This isn't our dumpster but the look of it is strikingly similar (sans beer cans):

The Health Department has had to come out to our place on multiple occasions to check out the mangled, decomposing carcasses of this activity’s byproducts. Dead roosters in your dumpster (which the Health Department doesn’t haul away—they just make a note of it) are a sad reminder of how our community has failed them.

Sure, that doesn’t happen everywhere. But in our suburban Miami back alley it happens every few months. Yet if the collective response of Animal Services, Miami-Dade police and the local Health Department is any indication, no one really cares.

I guess that when you compare dead roosters to the puppy-in-the-window drama I see every day, it may not seem like much. But if what I see in my back alley is only the tip of the iceberg, then laws in all 50 states may mean next to nothing when it comes to eradicating this cruel practice.

If anti-cruelty legislation like this comes down to mere lip service, I, for one, can’t say that its unenforced enaction makes me proud to be an American.