Louisiana last state to outlaw cockfights

Louisiana will ban cockfighting next year, becoming the last state to outlaw the blood sport, under a bill approved Wednesday by the Legislature.

Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco’s office said she would sign the measure, which bans the rural tradition in which specially bred roosters fight to the death while spectators bet on the outcome.

For years, state lawmakers resisted animal-rights activists’ efforts to outlaw it, but they relented this year on the condition that the prohibition be delayed. It will take effect in August 2008.

People in the cockfighting industry argued that an immediate ban would leave some with hundreds of chickens that would be useless if the fights were illegal.

House members agreed that cockfighters should have until next August to sell the birds or kill them off in fights.