Move on to ban cockfight mailings
Posted on Friday, April 28, 2006
The Humane Society of the United States filed a legal petition Thursday to block the mailing of cockfighting magazines, two of which are based in Arkansas.
The petition asks the U. S. Postal Service to declare The Gamecock and The Feathered Warrior nonmailable.
The Gamecock is based in Hartford, about 25 miles south of Fort Smith, and The Feathered Warrior is published in De Queen. Both magazines are decades old, the De Queen publication turning 103 years old in July.
Cockfighting is legal in only Louisiana and parts of New Mexico. Oklahoma voters banned cockfighting in 2002. The sport, where bets are placed on two game birds that are often fitted with metal spurs and that usually fight until one dies, is a felony in 32 states.
“The federal Animal Welfare Act and Postal Service regulations prohibit the use of the U. S. mail for the purpose of promoting or furthering animal fighting activities. Despite this clear prohibition, The Feathered Warrior and The Gamecock, which are packed with cockfighting schedules and advertisements for fighting birds and implements, are regularly mailed by the Postal Service from Arkansas,” the Humane Society said.
The group asks that notices be issued to post offices in De Queen and Hartford to refuse the mailing of the magazines.
J. C. Griffiths, publisher of The Gamecock, said the magazine has operated in Arkansas since 1941 and has been published since 1935. The monthly magazine has about 9, 000 subscribers.
Griffiths said he couldn’t comment on the petition until he sees the complaint.
“We have a mailing permit just like any other magazine does,” he said.
The Feathered Warrior also has about 9, 000 monthly subscribers all over the world, said publisher Verna Dowd.
Dowd, 76, said she bought the magazine in 1964 when it was published in Hot Springs and then moved the operation to De Queen. The magazine includes about 68 pages a month with information on breeding and care of birds, she said.
“It’s been a battle for the last few years,” Dowd said. “I don’t have the money to fight it. Our writers are not even that interested in writing anymore. I’ve having to resort to running old stories.” The shipment of game birds inside or outside the United States has been banned since 2003. Arkansas banned bird fights in 1879.
“Hunting and fishing is a big thing for Arkansas, and they’re trying to shut that down, too,” Dowd said of the Humane Society. “They’ll just get through with us and go on to something else.” Three magazines published in the country, including the two Arkansas publications, feature game fowl. The Humane Society did not name the third magazine, Grit and Steel, based in South Carolina, because the magazine banned advertising from fighting pits and spur or gaff sellers about a year ago, said John Goodwin, deputy manager of animal fighting issues for the Humane Society.
“Now it’s just a collection of reprinted news articles and USDA poultry health pamphlets,” he said. “Since Grit and Steel is not covered by this, it throws a light on the difference between magazines that are just speech and magazines that are helping people facilitate crimes.” Many game-bird breeders say they show their birds at county and state fairs and shows. Breeding the birds or owning the birds is not illegal.
About 1, 500 game-fowl breeders operate in Arkansas, according to the United Gamefowl Breeders Association, a national trade group.
Gerald Nix, a game-bird breeder in Pine Bluff and a director of the United Gamefowl Breeders Association, said he shows the birds in poultry shows and county fairs, as well as eats the eggs supplied by game hens.
“This is good country for raising chickens,” he said. “There’s three families here I furnish eggs to.”
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