Скачать или смотреть Cockfighting in Georgia (February 24, 1981)

Voiceover: An overview of how the preparation for cock fighting works; interview with a cock fighter breeder. Footage: A rooster.

A cockfight is a blood sport, held in a ring called a cockpit. The history of raising fowl for fighting goes back 6,000 years.[citation needed] The first documented use of the word gamecock, denoting use of the cock as to a "game", a sport, pastime or entertainment, was recorded in 1634,[1] after the term "cock of the game" used by George Wilson, in the earliest known book on the sport of cockfighting in The Commendation of Cocks and Cock Fighting in 1607. But it was during Magellan's voyage of discovery of the Philippines in 1521 when modern cockfighting was first witnessed and documented for Westerners by the Italian Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan's chronicler, in the Kingdom of Taytay.

United States

As of 2022, cockfighting is illegal in all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and all U.S. territories. The last state to implement a state law banning cockfighting was Louisiana; the Louisiana State Legislature voted to approve a ban in June 2007,[97] which went into effect in August 2008.[98]

As of 2013:

Cockfighting is a felony in 40 states and the District of Columbia.[99]
The possession of birds for fighting is prohibited in 39 states and the District of Columbia.[99]
Being a spectator at a cockfight is prohibited in 43 states and the District of Columbia.[99]
The possession of cockfighting implements is prohibited in 15 states.[99]
Additionally, the 2014 farm bill, signed into law by President Obama, contained a provision making it a federal crime to attend an animal fighting event or bring a child under the age of 16 to an animal fighting event.[100]

The cockfighting ban was further extended by federal law to include U.S. territories—American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands—effective at the end of 2019, as signed into law in the 2018 farm bill by President Trump.[101] In Puerto Rico, cockfighting is popular and has been considered a "national sport" since at least the 1950s.[102] According to a National Park Service report, it generates about $100 million annually. There are some 200,000 fighting birds annually on the island. Puerto Rico's Cockfighting Commission regulates 87 clubs, but many non-government sanctioned "underground" cockfighting operations exist.[103] On December 18, 2019, estimating that cockfighting employs 27,000 people and has a value to the economy of about $18 million, Puerto Rico passed a law attempting to keep the practice legal despite the imminent federal ban.[104] In 2021, governor Pedro Pierluisi announced the government would support a legal effort before the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the ban.[105] The Supreme Court refused to hear the case, Ortiz-Diaz v. United States, in October 2021, leaving the federal ban in place.[106]

The Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act, a federal law that made it a federal crime to transfer cockfighting implements across state or national borders and increasing the penalty for violations of federal animal fighting laws to three years in prison, became law in 2007. It passed the House of Representatives 368–39 and the Senate by unanimous consent and was signed into law by President George W. Bush.[107]

The Animal Welfare Act was amended again in 2008 when provisions were included in the 2008 Farm Bill (P.L. 110–246). These provisions tightened prohibitions on dog and other animal fighting activities, and increased penalties for violations of the act.[108]

Major law enforcement raids against cockfighting occurred in February 2014 in New York State (when 3,000 birds were seized and nine men were charged with felony animal-fighting in "Operation Angry Birds", the state's largest-ever cockfighting bust)[109][110][111] and in May 2017 in California (when the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department seized 7,000 cockfighting birds at a ranch in Val Verde, California, one of the largest cockfighting busts in U.S. history).[112][113] In 2014, Princess Irina of Romania pleaded guilty in federal court to operating a cockfighting ring in Oregon.[114][115]