Animal welfare groups fear cockfighting is contributing to the spread of the highly pathogenic avian influenza. (Photo by Stephen Ausmus/Animal Research Services, USDA)
Animal welfare groups have critiqued the U.S. Department of Agriculture as being “deficient” and lacking transparency in its response to the ongoing spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza. The groups point specifically to cockfighting as a key concern.
Veterinarians and leaders from Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy said cockfighting, which is illegal in all 50 states, has contributed to the spread of bird viruses in the past and contributed to the spread of the H5N1 in Asia.
Jim Keen, a veterinarian and director of veterinary sciences with the Center for Humane Economy said, in a virtual press conference on the topic, despite the “well documented” connection, USDA does not release data about cockfighting in relation to the bird flu.
“We don’t know how important cockfighting activities are in the U.S. because USDA does not capture, or does not release, that data in terms of backyard flocks,” Keen said.
USDA staff did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
According to a report written by Keen and Tom Pool, a veterinarian who was also on the virtual press conference, ten of the 15 U.S. outbreaks of Virulent Newcastle disease, another disease affecting birds, can be traced back to cockfighting.
“A lot of the people who participate in cockfighting, either as spectators or as participants or rearing the birds, they also work in the poultry houses,” Keen said. “So then they spread it to the backyard flocks, spread it to the commercial flocks, they spread it to wild birds.”
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USDA and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, distinguish between commercial and backyard poultry and non-poultry birds in its data of HPAI outbreaks. According to Keen and Pool’s research, cockfighting falls under the backyard poultry category, which is “an overt acknowledgment and admission that cockfighting is an international (transboundary) disease risk.”
In recent months, Iowa has had a number of HPAI detections, two of which were classified as backyard non-poultry flocks.
Don McDowell, communications director and public information officer for the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, said in an email to Iowa Capital Dispatch that none of the detections in Iowa have been associated with cockfighting operations.
“Our cases have been as a result of wild or migratory bird introductions,” McDowell said.
Time for a change in approach?
The most recent wave of outbreaks in Iowa began Dec. 6 with a detection in a commercial egg-laying flock in Sioux County. Since then, more than 6.6 million poultry in the state have been impacted by HPAI, according to USDA APHIS data.
U.S. outbreaks of the H5N1 bird flu began February 2022, nearly three years ago. To date, nearly 135 million birds in both commercial and backyard flocks have been affected by HPAI.
Current protocol from USDA and APHIS is to depopulate all exposed poultry during an outbreak. But the animal wellness veterinarians questioned the efficacy of that method after nearly three years of the virus persisting.
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“The stamping out is not working,” Keen said. “This virus is different, apparently, and whatever has worked in the past, is no longer working.”
Keen suggested USDA move away from depopulation methods for outbreaks in birds and try something different, like quarantine strategies used in dairy cattle outbreaks of the virus, so the country can learn to live with the flu.
“It’s no longer a foreign animal disease,” Keen said. “It’s endemic. It’s going to be here forever, so we cannot slaughter our way out of it.”
Pool, who is a former commander of the U.S. Army Veterinary Command, said “it’s impossible to exaggerate the potential risks” of H5N1 avian influenza. Pool, and other experts have said the virus is only one jump away from human-to-human transmission.
Animal Wellness Action has pushed for legislation, like the Fighting Inhumane Gambling and High-Risk Trafficking, or FIGHT, Act to prohibit the transport of mature roosters through the U.S. mail system, as a way of curbing cockfighting.
The FIGHT Act was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2023. Pool said efforts like this law, and greater transparency from USDA on cockfighting, would help manage HPAI and its potentially detrimental impacts on humans.
“From a biosecurity standpoint, really, from every standpoint, we simply have to do something about this cockfighting,” Pool said. “There’s every reason to, there’s no reason not to, other than money.”
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