Roosters, New & Proved

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

The rooster issue tends to fall through the cracks when boisterous shouting at council meetings and improbable explanations are offered for the existence of rooster farms on Big Island.  Breeding stock.  They're pretty.  They're for export only to out of state rooster emporiums. Finally someone did their homework, tracked shipments and named names:

A Washington, D.C., animal rights group named 12 Big Island residents and businesses as suspected distributors of fighting roosters to cockfighting operations in Guam... the results of a months-long investigation into Hawaii’s involvement in the international trade of fighting roosters, identifying 22 people or organizations throughout the state thought to have exported such birds to Guam in the past three years.
... the organization combed shipping records on Guam from between 2016 and 2019 and identified nearly 9,000 birds suspected of being bred as fighting roosters. About 1,000 of those birds, he said, were sent from Hawaii.

“(The exporters) sometimes claim they’re selling breeding stock,” Irby said. “But Guam has no commercial poultry industry, and almost all of these birds are roosters.”
“Any chicken farmer would tell you that’s not how you breed chickens...”

Irby pointed out that the 22 suspected shippers in the state are only representative of those who sent birds to Guam between 2016 and 2019, and does not show how many others are sending birds to the Philippines, Vietnam or other countries.
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/202...exporters/

[kalakoa]

Get ready for lack of enforcement followed by an ethics complaint that goes nowhere because "not our kuleana", after which we should see some unrelated State-level legislation that proves inconvenient for anyone who has any chickens of any kind. Maybe a mandatory microchipping and registration, paid for with a surcharge on chicken feed, because they will need to create a new office and hire staff.

[ChunksterK]

This issue was one of the main reasons Eileen Ohara was sent packing after one term on the county council and got basically nowhere in trying to become a state representative. She had the audacity to propose a county ordinance banning the rooster businesses on lots of one acre or less. Like so many laws on the books in Hawaii, those against cock fighting are almost never enforced, and only token measures are taken then. Move along. Nothing to see here.

[terracore]

Not all the fighting cocks are exported, a lot of them are fought right here on the island.

Cock fighting involves gambling, and gambling involves organized crime. It's a big issue that goes far beyond "raising roosters". It will never be tackled on this island within my lifetime, because there is too much corruption in the government. When I was in training for my animal cruelty and neglect investigator job they taught us that if we found evidence of cock fighting to STOP investigating if we wanted to live, and to notify the FBI because it would likely involve a dozen interstate felonies beyond animal cruelty laws. If you think that chapter was dark, you should have been there for the one on satanic ritual killing. Makes the cock fighters look like upstanding members of the local police department.

As far as export goes, most of the blood sport animals are sent through the USPS. The primary distribution network for this organized crime is a quasi-government agency.

If anybody was really concerned who is running these operations it would only take them about 10 minutes to find out. These birds have a very specific diet and need for products for treating lacerations. And there are only a few feed stores in town, and the employees talk.