Clandestine cockfights, according to Bandin, can be dangerous. “If you play by the rules, everyone has fun,” he said. “You go to other places and there are bad people — money launderers and drug dealers, gambling lots of money.” For this reason, Bandin said he’s a proponent of sanctioned, well-organized cockfights, and that he only sells the animals he raises to trusted, credentialed buyers.
The Humane Society of the United States considers cockfighting an unnecessarily violent sport and a breach of animal rights. They point out that “even the birds who aren’t killed during cockfights suffer terribly,” citing steroid injection, separation from other animals and poor living conditions.
Bandin pointed out the hypocrisy of such U.S.-oriented perspectives by comparing cockfighting to factory farming. “Nowadays, the chickens you eat are raised in five weeks and then they’re in the supermarket,” Bandin said, “without ever seeing a ray of sunshine, without ever climbing a tree or running around scratching for worms in the dirt.”
Bandin’s gamecocks, he said, enjoy relative freedom as they mature naturally. They aren’t sold for combat until they reach two to three years of age. According to Bandin, little training is necessary, as fighting breeds are naturally aggressive. “It’s not what you feed the cocks or how you bathe them or anything,” he said. “It’s in their blood – it comes with their race. Like a fighting bull.”
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Aedan Seaver is a student at the University of Oregon.
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Publish date : 2024-08-14 08:55:00
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