Enid News & Eagle
May
26
Group: State tops list of illegal shipping of fighting chickens
2020 By Clifton Adcock
The Frontier
Nearly 20 years after Oklahoma made
Page cockfighting and the possession of chickens
used for cockfighting a felony, the state is
A005 one of the largest exporters of game fowl
used in illegal cockfights in the country,
Clip according to a national animal rights group.
Avian shipping records obtained from
resized Guam Department of Agriculture by the
34% group Animal Wellness Action showed that
between 2017 and 2019, around 8,800 birds
were illegally shipped from the U.S. main-
land to Guam, a U.S. territory in the western
Pacific Ocean, for cockfighting, said Wayne
Pacelle, the group’s founder and president.
Of the 71 people who exported those
birds to Guam, the top five exporters were
responsible for more than half of the birds
sent, and three of the top five shippers were
based in Oklahoma, Pacelle said.
“We basically found that over this two-
year period, there were 8,800 fighting birds
shipped to Guam from the United States,
and Oklahoma was by far the number one
shipper to Guam,” Pacelle said.
Two of the three Oklahoma-based breed-
ers listed in Animal Wellness Action’s top
five shippers list told The Frontier that
someone else was using their name to ship
birds or the birds being shipped were for
breeding or show purposes only.
Cockfighting became illegal in Guam
and other U.S. territories in December, a
year after President Donald Trump signed
the 2018 Farm Bill into law, which con-
tained a provision known as the Parity in
Animal Cruelty Enforcement Act, which
extended the federal bans on dogfighting
and cockfighting to the U.S. territories.
Cockfighting was made illegal in
Oklahoma in 2003, following passage of
a ballot initiative a year earlier known as
State Question 687. The measure not only
outlawed cockfighting, but also made it
a felony punishable by up to 10 years in
prison and fines of up to $25,000 to pos-
sess, own or train birds for the purpose of
cockfighting.
Following passage of the measure by
Oklahoma voters, its constitutionality was
challenged by individuals and companies
involved in cockfighting, but the law was
upheld in 2004 by Oklahoma Supreme
Court. U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear
the case when those challenging the law
attempted to appeal.
Pacelle, who was CEO of the Humane
Society of the United States, was deep-
ly involved with getting Oklahoma’s
anti-cockfighting law passed, as well as the
new law prohibiting cockfighting in U.S.
territories.
In addition, federal law passed around
the same time as Oklahoma’s anti-cock-
fighting law went into effect prohibits the
shipping of fighting animals across state
lines, as well as to U.S. territories and other
countries.
Pacelle said the shipping records from
Guam Department of Agriculture show tell-
tale signs of shipping birds for the purposes
of cockfighting — the male to female ratio
of birds shipped was around 100-to-1, pric-
es for two or three birds ranged from $500
Property of OPS News Tracker and members of the Oklahoma Press Association.
Game fowl are shown at Moody Farm in Tahlequah, which is listed by Animal Wellness Action as one of the
top shippers in the nation of game fowl to Guam. (Photo provided)
to $1,500 and Guam’s lack of major poultry
laying and broiler operations.
“People aren’t going to pay $1,500 to get
three birds for meat or for eggs,” Pacelle
said. “The fact that it is basically the least
agriculturally-oriented part of the United
States — they import almost all of their ani-
mal products — showed that this is exact-
ly why they were shipping the birds from
Oklahoma.”
Pacelle said the group also backgrounds
those they suspected of shipping fighting
birds, using social media posts and Google
Earth images to confirm their suspicions.
“We are basically making the argument,
and we have the facts to support it, that
there is a brisk trade in illegal fighting ani-
mals coming from Oklahoma,” Pacelle said.
To be able to sell their chickens, breed-
ers have to first show that their roosters are
good fighters, Pacelle said. And to do that,
they have to fight them, he said.
“They don’t just breed them and ship
them, that’s a felony. No breeder can sell
the animal if they’re not fighting their
birds, without showing they are robust
game fowl,” Pacelle said. “Basically, you
have cockfighters who make their money by
being a good breeder and selling their birds
to others. But the only way you can demon-
strate you’re a good breeder is if your birds
win fights.”
The No. 1 shipper to Guam, according
to the records obtained by Animal Wellness
Action, was John and Brenda Bottoms of
Heavener, who operated under the name
Gunner Game Farm and shipped 1,719 birds
to Guam over the course of three years.
The Bottoms told The Frontier that they
ship game fowl for other breeders as a
broker through Brenda Bottoms’ compa-
ny Brenda’s Shipping, so not all of the
birds that were shipped were theirs. The
birds being shipped, the Bottoms told The
Frontier, are not for fighting, but for show
and breeding purposes only.
“I ship chickens for several people.
There’s not many people who are legal
to ship, but I am,” Brenda Bottoms said.
“Everything I ship is for breeding purposes
only. It says that on the certificate.”
John Bottoms estimated his wife’s com-
pany has probably shipped between 3,000
and 4,000 male and female birds over the
past few years.
“We ship roosters for people all over, but
we’re not anywhere near the biggest game
farm,” John Bottoms said.
John Bottoms said he has raised game
fowl since 1980. And though he “100%
disagreed with the law” banning cockfight-
ing in the state, once it went into effect, he
stopped fighting them.
“I still raise them just for breeding pur-
poses only,” he said. “We quit fighting them
and started shipping brood fowl only, for
show purposes only,” John Bottoms said.
“That’s what it (the shipping certificate)
says.”
Since the ban on cockfighting in U.S. ter-
ritories went into effect in December, their
shipping business has fallen from around
1,000 birds shipped per year to around 150,
John Bottoms said.
Bottoms said cockfighting is deeply
ingrained in the heritage of many people in
those territories, as well as in other coun-
tries like the Philippines.
Though the records obtained by Animal
Wellness Action only cover shipments to
Guam, the large volume of chickens com-
ing from Oklahoma could mean that birds
are being shipped to other places as well,
including the Philippines, Thailand and
Mexico, where cockfighting still is legal.
“It’s indicative. There’s no way their
business is entirely predicated on Guam,
which is a territory of 170,000 people out
in the western Pacific Ocean,” Pacelle said.
“This is a global industry, and frankly,
they’re shipping birds to other states.”
The third-largest shipper with 839 birds
shipped during the three years, Bill McNatt
of Cherokee Game Farm in Stigler, did
not respond to a phone message by The
Frontier. McNatt, who was an elementary
school principal in Keota, was arrested in
2007 when authorities raided a cockfighting
ring in southeastern Oklahoma.
However, the fifth-largest shipper on
the list, Darrell Trammell, owner of Moody
Farm in Tahlequah, said that he did not
ship any birds. Rather, another individual
had used his National Poultry Improvement
Plan number to ship birds.
That person died of a heart attack during
a trip to the Philippines in January 2018, he
said. The shipping records provided to The
Frontier by Animal Wellness Action show
the last shipment in Trammell’s name was
made to Guam in December 2017.
“I’ve never shipped a chicken to Guam,
but there was a boy who was a friend of
mine who was a shipper,” Trammell said.
“He shipped some chickens once to Hawaii
for me and he had to have my NPIP number,
and I think he just kept my NPIP number
handy and used it to ship chickens to Guam.
“I’m not a shipper. I don’t ship to people
at all. Probably ought to be, there’s good
money in it, I think. But there’s a lot of
legalities to it too. I just don’t want to do
that.”
However, in a Nov. 7, 2018, post on
Moody Farm’s Facebook page, customers
from Mexico are advised on how to have
brood fowl from Moody Farms shipped to
them.
Trammell said he still owns chickens, but
only for breeding and show purposes.
Since the ban went into effect in
Oklahoma, Trammell said he does not
attend fights. And though the law prohibits
owning chickens for fighting, authorities
do allow game fowl to be owned in “brood
trios” — a male and two females, he said.
“That’s what the law told us when they
shut us down,” Trammell said. “They were
going to shut us down originally — you
couldn’t even own a feather on one. You
couldn’t own a string, you couldn’t own a
pen, you couldn’t own a water cup. We all
got together and talked to the senators about
it, and they were going to have to buy us
out if they shut down the business. So, they
said, ‘You can raise them and sell them, but
you can’t fight them.’”
Pacelle said he hopes U.S. Department
of Agriculture will step up its enforcement
of the anti-animal fighting laws, and hopes
to see U.S. Department of Justice form an
animal cruelty crimes unit.
“They’re very lax in enforcing the feder-
al law, which is one of the big things we’re
concentrating on,” Pacelle said.
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