Cockfighting remains implicated in spread of H5N1 avian flu

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:

 

 

Cockfighting remains implicated in spread of H5N1 avian flu

 

SAN JUAN, BHUBANESHWAR--Avian influenza may bring the demise

of cockfighting faster than animal advocacy in cockfighting

strongholds from Puerto Rico to rural Orissa state, India--but only

if governments hold cockfighters to the same restrictions as other

poultry farmers.

More than 100 New Year's Day 2008 cockfights were cancelled

in Puerto Rico after bird imports were suspended due to an outbreak

of the avian flu H5N2 in the Dominican Republic. H5N2 is a milder

cousin of H5N1, which has killed more than 225 people worldwide

since 2003.

The rapid spread of H5N1 through Southeast Asia, especially

Thailand, was linked to the traffic in gamecocks, which remains a

major suspected H5N1 vector, along with traffic in falcons, but

commerce in live poultry for human consumption became the most often

implicated source of H5N1 after the disease hit commercial poultry

flocks.

Puerto Rican agriculture minister Gabriel Figueroa halted

bird imports from all nations, not just the Dominican Republic,

because of the possibility that the Dominican outbreak originated

elsewhere.

" The matches were already organized, and people had already

requested their visas and made hotel reservations, " Puerto Rican

government cockfighting director Carlos Quinones complained to Laura

N. Perez Sanchez of Associated Press.

Puerto Rican cockfighting involves about 50,000 human

participants, 100,000 cockfights, and attendance of 1.25 million

spectators per year, according to Quinones' office, which puts the

economic value of cockfighting to Puerto Rico at $400 million per

year.

The numbers are questionable, projecting average expenditure

of $320 per person per cockfight seen. Cockfighting is nonetheless

so politically entrenched that the Puerto Rican legislature responded

to the U.S. abolition of legal cockfighting by passing a bill

defining the opportunity to participate in cockfights as a " cultural

right. "

In Orissa, meanwhile, and other Indian enclaves of

cockfighting, participants elude prosecution by staging fights in

temples under the pretext of sacrifice. Political cover tends to

come from local district committees of the Hindu nationalist

Bharatiya Janata Party--which is ironically also the party of People

for Animals founder Maneka Gandhi.

Mrs. Gandhi served five years as the first Indian minister

for animal welfare when the BJP controlled the Indian parliament

early in the current decade, but eventually lost her ministry due to

pressure from a coalition of biomedical researchers and practitioners

of animal sacrifice.

A January 2008 outbreak of H5N1 in West Bengal near the

Orissa border was declared contained in early February, after about

3.4 million chickens and domestic ducks were culled, but the cull

was subverted by villagers who bootlegged so many birds to market

before they could be killed that the price of poultry fell by half.

Another 2.1 million chickens were believed to be at risk in

Orissa, Assam, Bihar, and Jharkhand states, but Orissa balked at

ordering a cull, after Veterinary Officers Training Institute

officer-in-charge Ramakanta Mohapatra reported that the 900,000

chickens said to be at risk in Orissa included 10,000 to 12,000

gamecocks.

Orissa minister for fisheries and animal resource development

Golak Bihari Naik told The Hindu that the gamecocks are the " life and

pride " of rural tribal families.

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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