Oklahoma to vote on cockfighting ban

Animal-rights activism is colliding head-on with rural tradition in Oklahoma, where voters will decide on November 5 whether to ban cockfighting in one of the last three US states to allow it.

Supporters of the proposed ban say cockfighting is inhumane and gives the state a bad name.

Opponents say the sport, also legal in Louisiana and New Mexico, is a livelihood for people who raise the birds and is no more cruel than the way chickens are raised and slaughtered.

Cockfighting became legal in Oklahoma in 1963, when the state Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that a fowl is not an animal and is thus exempt from state law against animal fighting.

Specially-bred gamecocks are fitted with razor-sharp spurs or knives. They are placed in dirt pits and often fight to the death. Illegal gambling is often the big draw.

“It’s barbaric – abject cruelty to animals,” said Janet Halliburton, who led the petition drive to put the measure on the ballot. “It makes us look like a bunch of knuckle-dragging animal abusers.”

Most Oklahomans have never seen a cockfight and polls show the ban is likely to pass by a wide margin.

Outgoing Governor Frank Keating has endorsed the measure, saying, “It is simply embarrassing to Oklahoma to be seen as one of only a tiny handful of locations outside of the Third World where this activity is legal.”

However, a former governor, David Walters, opposes the measure, saying it would halt a source of income for some impoverished rural communities.

Nancy Savage, 54, a former teacher who grew up going to cockfights, now edits an industry newsletter, The Cock ’N Bull. Gamecocks, she said, are well-fed and sheltered and many live to be four or five years old, “compared with those in the poultry houses, who are five or six months old when they hit the chopping block.”

The measure on the Oklahoma ballot would make it a felony to hold cockfights, keep equipment or facilities for cockfighting or possess birds for cockfighting. The penalty would be up to 10 years in prison.

In New Mexico and Louisiana, there have been periodic attempts to outlaw cockfighting, but they have always failed in the Legislature.