Stage Is Set for Battles Over Cockfighting

Lawmakers in New Mexico are struggling to decide whether it should remain one of just two states in the country allowing cockfighting.

Hundreds of cockfighting enthusiasts and animal rights activists recently crowded the state Capitol to testify on a proposal that would make sponsoring, arranging, holding or participating in cockfighting a felony.

Supporters of the ban say it is long overdue. Opponents argue that the blood sport is misunderstood and an important source of revenue for parts of the state.

This month, the cockfighting lobby scored a victory when a proposed ban died in the Senate. The battle switched to the state’s House, where another bill to ban cockfighting has been introduced.

“My view is that 80% of New Mexicans, including myself, think cockfighting is a barbaric practice,” said Republican Rep. Ron Godbey, who introduced the bill.

Godbey expects the first hearing on his bill to take place in the coming days.

New Mexico and Louisiana are the only states that permit cockfighting, in which roosters with razor-sharp metal spurs affixed to their legs are placed in an enclosure to fight, often to the death.

Oklahoma banned cockfighting in November. But now it faces court challenges, mostly from rural counties.

Opponents of the ban gained temporary injunctions against the law in 22 counties in the state.

The urban centers of Tulsa and Oklahoma City overwhelmingly support the ban.

“Forty-eight other states in this country have banned cockfighting, most of them over 100 years ago,” said Danielle Bays, a lobbyist for Animal Protection Voters of New Mexico. “New Mexico’s time has come.”

New Mexico cockfighters, mostly from southern and rural areas of the state, say the sport is a matter of culture, tradition and freedom.

It is also a significant source of income for New Mexico’s impoverished areas that depend on exports of fighting fowl to places such as the Philippines.

“This is about people coming from out of state and trying to control the culture here -- a culture they don’t understand,” said Ronald Barron, president of the New Mexico Game Birds Assn., which has more than 7,000 members.

“Cockfighting has been in my family for four generations,” said Steve Rodriguez, an association member. “Why don’t they worry about people starving or schools? A lot of people make a living doing this.”

Barron said New Mexico’s cockfighting industry, including items such as the animals, feed, restaurants and lodging, brings in more than $51 million a year to a state that ranks among the country’s poorest.

It remains to be seen whether the perception of animal cruelty will outweigh the industry’s economic and entertainment benefits for rural communities.

As in the battle in Oklahoma, the fight to ban cockfighting pits urban areas against rural regions.

A poll by Animal Protection Voters of New Mexico showed 81% of New Mexicans support a ban on cockfighting, which already is banned in 13 New Mexico counties and in 28 municipalities, including Albuquerque.

Despite the support to end the blood sport, a similar ban failed to pass in the state Legislature two years ago.

In Oklahoma, judges in counties that have been home to cockfighting said they needed to see whether the ban unfairly interferes with commerce or deprives game fowl breeders of property without just compensation -- or simply makes felons out of chicken farmers.

Asked whether New Mexico cockfighters would consider a legal battle to fight a ban, Barron said, “You bet we’ll take this to the courts. There’s no doubt about it.”