Cockfighting Laws in Kentucky 2020

“Kentucky has become fertile ground for the global cockfighting industry,” Pacelle said. States shall take measures to increase the penalties applicable to cockfighting and to broaden the scope of prohibited measures related to cockfighting. In 2013, cockfighting laws were introduced in 15 states. Nebraska and Nevada have enacted laws to increase penalties for cockfights. Indiana has reclassified its penalties for cockfights as part of a general reclassification of penalties for indictable offences. Among the 13 states where a first cockfighting offense is a misdemeanor, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah have introduced laws that would increase the penalty for cockfighting to a crime; all have washed up or remain exceptional poultry. While cockfights take place throughout the country and abroad, it has a long and infamous history in parts of Kentucky. It wasn`t until 1974 that state legislatures passed a law that made participation in blood sports a crime. About 17 Kentuckians are charged with animal cruelty related to cockfighting after being indicted by a grand jury. That`s according to the U.S. Attorney`s Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky, which announced the cases Wednesday.

“Animal fighting plans are cruel and illegal,” said Carlton S. Shier, IV, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. “We are committed to enforcing federal animal cruelty laws, and I would like to commend the efforts of our law enforcement partners whose dedication and efforts have led to these charges for the Eastern District of Kentucky. Beshear repeated her social distancing orders on December 10 and 14, 2020, but Vanessa Shakib, co-director of the Redondo Beach-based Animal Advancement Act, claimed on December 18, 2020. December 2020 “a victory in our cockfight case against Monterey County,” she told ANIMALS 24-7 after Monterey County settled a shakib lawsuit filed on behalf of SHARK and Humane Farming, promising to “crack down on cockfights. Monterey County has agreed to a list of application criteria,” Shakib said. We will work with the county to ensure that these criteria are met. If you want to “save” these birds, then you are as bad as the pit bull extremists who save the battle pits at the expense of human lives and humanity in general.

It was such a failure and it still is, it makes me suspect that your real motivation is not to stop cockfighting, but to get grants for rooster sanctuaries to house fighting birds. It is wasteful. You cannot eradicate crime while utensils thrive and prosper. Steve Hindi stopped eating meat more than 30 years ago. The “beliefs” that Hindi “tries to impose on people” are actually the law in Kentucky and for more than 150 years the law, as described in detail by historian Joseph R. Jones of the University of Kentucky in “Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Recovering the History of Cockfighting in Kentucky,” published in the winter of 1997, editor of the Kentucky Review, core.ac.uk/download/pdf/232574292.pdf. Jones notes, in passing, that “the excellent new Encyclopedia of Kentucky (1992) does not even include the word cockfighting in its overview of the sports of ancient and modern Kentuckians.” This confirms the complete absence of cockfights at every mention in the work of Kentucky`s most important folklorist, James Taylor Adams (1892-1954), of Big Laurel. Cockfights, in short, are just one part of Kentucky`s criminal history and subculture, which has been hated by decent Kentuckians since the beginning of colonization, when it was associated with the arrival of slave owners from Virginia. The curious notion that “nature intended” any human “harvest” of “agricultural animals” is refuted by the reality that humans spent nearly 10,000 years domesticating poultry, pigs, and livestock, among others, all of which preceded our own existence as a species of millions of years, with the end result that all “domesticated” species still easily become wild and almost everywhere without human help. survive pretty well. Crack, heroin and other “hard” drugs are not legal anywhere in the United States; Looters and rioters fill prisons wherever looting and rioting has taken place recently, while recently few rooster fighters have been arrested, let alone imprisoned.

However, it is a harmful myth that cockfights or any other form of gambling generate income that helps the poor in one way or another. The actual production of goods and services brings money to the communities, but gambling only recirculates the money that already exists, to the net benefit of the only people who run the gambling establishments. Many economists, after studying the issue in depth, have observed that legal gambling is essentially a tax on stupidity, while illegal gambling is just theft in disguise. Prosecutors say Rickie Johnson, 55, rented property to Harold “Fuzzy” Hale, 72, in 2021 and fought with the help of Jacklyn Rachelle Johnson, 31. Five others, including Orville Asher, 39; Dallas Cope, 35; Hiram B. Creech, Jr., 47, Bradley Cye Rose, 72; and Joshua Westerfield, 36, are accused of displaying a rooster for cockfights. SHARK and the Humane Farming Association, as co-plaintiffs, had a relatively frustrating time exposing cockfights in Monterey County, California. The third indictment alleges that between November 2018 and January 2020, the group conspired to conduct weekly animal fighting projects at the Riverside Game Club in Manchester, Kentucky. Court documents further indicated that the Riverside Game Club was owned and operated by Hubbard. Sizemore, with the help of Beachel and Lester Collett, organized the participants into various fights, cataloged entrance fees, bantamweight, tracked weapons used on animals, organized fights, and tracked the gains and losses of different participants. Sizemore reportedly distributed promotional materials about the fights, and Hubbard collected entrance fees and had trailers that could be rented to people who participated in animal fights. It was also claimed that the groups paid regular employees, including Smith, to work in the fighting.

Reporting on this issue should have been useless years ago, as federal cockfighting is illegal in the United States and in all territories held by the United States for more than twelve years, and has been illegal at the U.S. level.