California Association for the Preservation of Gamefowl argues that 90% of game fowl breeders are Latino. So are 89% of 90 recent cockfighting-related murder victims.
SACRAMENTO, California––California state assembly member Chris Rogers, a Democrat from Ukiah, might have imagined his anti-cockfighting bill, AB 928, would easily clear the state senate appropriations committee on August 3, 2026 and advance to passage.
AB 928, written to limit to 25 the number of tethered roosters anyone could keep on a single property, had already cleared the state assembly on June 4, 2025, by a margin of 46-15.
AB 928 had also cleared the California state senate judiciary committee on June 22, 2026, by a vote of 7-2.
(Beth Clifton collage)
What don’t Senators Cervantes & Seyarto get about cockfighting in Riverside County?
Referred by the judiciary committee the next day to the appropriations committee, AB 928 next came before five Democrats, including committee chair Sabrina Cervantes, from Riverside County, and only two Republicans, led by committee vice chair Kelly Seyarto, representing parts of Riverside, San Bernardino, and Orange counties.
Both Cervantes and Seyarto should have been familiar with the drug-related havoc, including murder, associated with cockfighting in their districts. Cervantes and Seyarto should also have been well aware of the catastrophic effects of Newcastle disease, spread primarily by cockfighters, on the poultry industries of their districts.
(See Disease linked to cockfighting menaces California poultry industry.)
What don’t Senators Cabaldon & Wahab get about cockfighting?
Fellow California senate appropriations committee member Christopher L. Cabaldon, the first Filipino-American senator in California history, was previously the longest serving mayor of West Sacramento ever, serving from 1998 to 2020.
Cabaldon should have had a comparable level of awareness, because crime and disease linked to cockfighting occurred in West Sacramento during his mayoral tenure.
Another California senate appropriations committee member, Aisha Wahab, the first Muslim and Afghan American elected to the California state senate, should have known that Mohammed himself forbade any form of animal fighting.
The other three California senate appropriations committee members, Megan Dahle, a Republican, and Tim Grayson and Laura Richardson, both Democrats, might not have been as familiar with the societal harm done by cockfighting as Cervantes, Seyarto, Cabaldon, and Wahab might have been expected to be.
“Hundreds” defended “livelihoods or cultural practices”
But the majority of the California state senate appropriations committee should not have groveled as they did on August 3, 2026, killing AB 928 after “Hundreds of people came to Sacramento from across the state to oppose the bill,” summarized Naomi Taxay for the Sacramento Bee.
“Many of their concerns focused on how the bill would affect their livelihoods or cultural practices,” Taxay continued, noting that AB 928 “included exemptions for several non-cockfighting purposes, including food production, educational programs, animal shelters and exhibitions.
“According to the primary opposition group,” Taxay explained, “the California Association for the Preservation of Gamefowl, 90% of game fowl breeders are Latino. During the senate appropriations hearing on August 3, 2026, opponents wore shirts with the phrase ‘Stop targeting minorities.'”
Racist presumption
About 41% of California residents are Latino, as are more than half of the constituents in Riverside County.
Among 773 recent arrestees for alleged cockfighting activity, logged from law enforcement reports and news accounts by ANIMALS 24-7 in 2025, 63% had Spanish surnames.
But a presumption that because the participants in a particular criminal activity are predominantly of one ethnicity, that the criminal activity is part of the cultural heritage of the ethnicity is racist on the very face of it.
Such an argument could be used to defend the Sicilian mafia, for instance, or Colombian cocaine cartels, or the Ku Klux Klan.
Often, though not always, the victims of the crime in question are also predominantly of the same ethnicity as the criminals. For example, of the most recent 90 victims of murders associated with cockfighting of whom ANIMALS 24-7 has record, 89% were Latino.
Opium dens
California has had more than 150 years of experience with this sort of thing, albeit that the history seems to have been unknown to the seven members of the California state senate appropriations committee.
Just a little more than 150 years ago, opium dens plagued the inner city Chinatowns of San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles, protected by criminal gangs called “tongs.”
The victims of opium addiction were primarily Chinese immigrants and their families, including women driven into prostitution, but little or nothing was done to fight the opium trade until photographs were distributed of addicted Caucasian women.
Then, “Driven by anti-Chinese xenophobia, San Francisco passed the nation’s first anti-drug law—the Opium Den Ordinance—in 1875,” Google AI tells us.
End of opium dens opened Chinatown to relative prosperity
Despite the Opium Den Ordinance, opium dens persisted, and were even promoted in San Francisco as a tourist attraction, as cockfighting was until recently in Louisiana, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
Then the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed most of Chinatown, and indeed destroyed most of San Francisco.
The rebuilt Chinatown, largely without opium dens, has never been as prosperous on the whole as most of the rest of San Francisco, but San Francisco post-1906 has been continuously among the most prosperous U.S. cities, ranking first in affluence since 2022.
San Francisco prosperity, ironically, has in recent years been threatened only by resurgent drug-related crime.
California cockfighting busts
Meanwhile in Sacramento, Taxay of the Bee recalled that, “Although cockfighting is illegal under both federal and state law, California has been the site of some of the nation’s largest cockfighting busts. In 2017, deputies seized approximately 7,000 birds in Southern California. As recently as February, a months-long investigation led to the recovery of more than 800 birds in Santa Rosa.”
And on August 9, 2026, less than a week after the California senate appropriations committee killed AB 928, the sheriff’s office in Tulare County, California arrested four alleged cockfighters in a Sunday morning raid, while about 30 suspects “fled in numerous vehicles,” KSEE/KGPE news reported.
Officers found “large amounts of money, scales believed to be used for weighing roosters, leg tags, receipts documenting wagers, raffle tickets, and about 20 to 30 live caged roosters,” along with dead roosters, KSEE/KGPE added.
“Political fronts to protect cockfighting”
AB 928 sponsor Chris Rogers, Taxay of the Bee resumed, “alleged that many gamefowl preservation groups, such as the California Association for the Preservation of Gamefowl, operate as political fronts to protect cockfighting. The allegation is based in part on the group’s affiliation with the United Gamefowl Breeders Association, whose leadership has been tied to the commercial supply chain and political defense of illegal cockfighting.
“The California chapter denies the allegation,” Taxay wrote, “and said its opposition to the bill is rooted in concerns about property rights and cultural preservation.
“In more recent hearings, immigrant rights groups signed onto the opposition, worried the bill could provide immigration enforcement officers with an additional pretext to enter homes.”
The response to that is simple and obvious: if afraid of ICE, don’t keep roosters, who tend to alert whole neighborhoods to their presence.
“Vast majority” of U.S. communities ban rooster-keeping entirely
The noisy proclivities of roosters, rather than cockfighting, provided the initial impetus to the passage of legislation.
Advises Googe AI, “Chicken-keeping ordinances are decided locally by tens of thousands of individual municipalities, counties, and homeowners associations, rather than by a single federal or state agency. However, data from urban planning organizations and poultry advocacy groups indicates that the vast majority of urban and suburban communities across the United States ban roosters entirely.
“While a legal overview by the Sustainable Cities Institute shows that 97 of the 100 largest U.S. cities allow backyard hens, almost all of those same cities strictly outlaw male chickens.”
California counties began trying to limit rooster numbers
The notion of allowing possession of some roosters while restricting the numbers to discourage cockfighters may have originated in Solano County, California, with a 2011 ordinance prohibiting keeping more than four roosters without an exemption from the county agriculture department.
Challenged in court by gamefowl breeders in Dixon and Vacaville, the Solano County ordinance was upheld at all levels, including by the Sixth Appellate District Court of Appeals.
Monterey County adopted a similar Rooster Keeping Ordinance in 2014, with a five-rooster limit, but has rarely enforced it.
(See Wildfires, COVID-19, & cockfighting besiege Monterey County.)
Sacramento County on July 16, 2026 adopted perhaps the strictest rooster limit ordinance in effect yet, allowing no more than two roosters per residential property in unincorporated parts of the county, superseded in cities, towns, and homeowners associations where keeping any roosters is forbidden.
The Sacramento County ordinance also prohibits tethering roosters.
Pacelle: “We’re going to be pushing this”
Humane World for Animals president Kitty Block and Wayne Pacelle, president of both Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy, in September 2025 separately announced their support of AB 928 and/or similar local legislation.
“We’re going to be pushing this ordinance in Sacramento,” Pacelle told ANIMALS 24-7. “I think California has proved itself to be the biggest cockfighting state in the nation, for a variety of reasons, and getting these county ordinances, and then enforcing them, is a big strike against cockfighting.”
Showing Animals Respect & Kindness founder Steve Hindi, with support from the California-based Humane Farming Association, “was working in Monterey County a few years back,” Pacelle reminded, “and there were 1,000 backyard cockfighting operations in that county alone.”
25-rooster limit would in effect legalize cockfighting
But there is as yet no evidence that rooster limits are either enforceable or effective in reducing cockfighting. The failure of enforcement in Monterey County stands as Exhibit A.
The 25-rooster limit proposed by AB 928 would in effect have legalized cockfighting, by setting the threshhold for humane enforcement against cockfighters at a level that would exempt practically all but the most active, and would do nothing at all to prevent gamefowl breeders from using their winning roosters to breed any number of hens.
In light of that reality, what opposition to AB 928 was really all about was defending gamefowl breeding on an industrial scale, for cockfighting practiced at the level of legal forms of gambling.
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To perpetuate this form of cruelty and vicious sport is degrading to society not to mention the terrible suffering of the chickens. Shame bill didn’t pass yet, but don’t give up!
Playing the race card to stoop so low, especially when it adversely affects members of those groups whose representatives crowed the loudest, is disgusting, underhanded and, as you pointed out, harmful not only to the hapless birds made to participate in this death “sport” but also many with little if any connection to it.
Thanking you for your continuing coverage of what the majority in my great State are probably totally unaware of.
This long time animal advocate and proud member of United Poultry Concerns (who so misses Karen Davis) joins the previous writers in their disgust at all who support this vile blood sport, and thank you for your continued investigations and coverage.
Even just reading about it is sickening enough, and I deplore those who participate for whatever their spurious ‘reason’ as I do those in political office and so called ‘law enforcement’ who condone it. What a sad species we are!
We have parliamentarians and pegislators like this in India, too. Every decision they take is political and is to ensure they get more votes. Here we call it “minority appeasement” and vote bank politics.
Editor’s note: John Harless, author of the following, is identified by a variety of public records and media reports as variously president of the California Association for the Preservation of Gamefowl, as of 2017, and treasurer as of 2024. ANIMALS 24-7 responds to several of his claims below.
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Well……….your article seems to have been written by Wayne Pacelle; you sure shared all his BS points.
It has long been the animal rights radicals [ARR] theme to to tie “Drug, sex and rock n roll” to cocking. You can’t get people all stoked up over 2 rooster bumping heads. The number of raids on actual cocking events is VERY rare compared to the total number that are actually happening. I used to be active in the sport for 40+ years and I NEVER saw violence or drugs other than a few “good ol’ boys’ out by their cars having a joint, which is pretty universal in all walks of life.
The Newcastle charge is false. I have a many years contact wit the past head of the UC Davis poultry department. She said that gamefowl have NEVER been the genesis of Newcastle. Of course they are affected as are all chickens, but they didn’t start it and it isn’t spread at the fights. A cock has to in tip top shape to be taken into the pit and a bird infected with a disease can’t make the cut.
The whole idea of limiting the number of roosters a person can have based on the assumption that they might possibly be used for fighting is a blatant Bill of Attainer [unConstitutional] and it tramples on county zonings. The zoning on your property is spelled out in the deed and is a “contract” between the county and the land owner. This “contract” can’t, legally, be changed unilaterally by the State or the County.
Furthermore, your part about the big “cockfight busts” is BS. They raided property that had roosters on it. No fighting was taking place………makes good headlines though!
To close, cockfighting in CA is not an issue that the people are worried about . Most are surprised that it still exist. Additionally, we are a Constitutional Republic which protects the minority against the tranny of the majority. There is NOTHING in the US or CA Constitution that gives the government the authority or duty to “protect”, defend or represent animals………PERIOD.
Wayne Pacelle, with due respect for his many legislative accomplishments against cockfighting, may be flattered at the suggestion that he might have ghostwritten “California state senators grovel before cockfighters’ cultural defense.” Reality, though, is that ANIMALS 24-7 first investigated, exposed, and helped to expel a problematic cockfighter from a small rural community when Pacelle was about 12 years old.
A very quick check of NewspaperArchive.com shows that the association of cockfighting with illegal intoxicants was exposed, in separate cases, by the Kaukauna Times of Wisconsin on April 6, 1922 and by the Boston Post on June 5, 1922, no doubt not for the first time in either instance.
The association of cockfighting with other violent crime was judicially noted in London, England as early as June 18, 1828, when cockfighter Archibald Kelly was ordered transported for fatally knifing a colleague. More than 500 murders have been associated with cockfighting in the U.S. alone.
The role of cockfighting in spreading exotic Newcastle disease in California in 2002-2003, and the desperation of then-U.S. agriculture secretary Ann Veneman to enlist gamefowl breeders in combatting it after law enforcement failed to stop the transport of infected gamefowl, was illustrated when Veneman agreed to pay compensation of $79.31 each for roosters killed to contain Newcastle, compared to compensation of $2.89 apiece paid for egg-laying hens. Altogether, suspected cockfighters were paid $11.4 million.
(See Cockfighters cleaned up on Newcastle clean-up.)
Cockfighting was already illegal in much of the future U.S. even before the U.S. Constitution was written. Prohibition of cockfighting has never been repealed anywhere by a vote of the people, but cockfighting has been banned by votes of the people in Arizona (1998), Missouri (1998), and Oklahoma (2002).
Pacelle / Animals 24/7…………potaytoes/potawtoes……..who cares. Wayne has been in the spotlight for decades; Animals 24/7? Never heard of them!
Fine; you’re gone. We are not here to provide a platform for you to demonstrate your ignorance.
Mr. Harless,
Please count me as one of those ARRs (Animal Rights Radicals), as you called us, and I’ll designate you a Chicken Cuck, because you and your fellow cucks don’t have the balls to do the fighting yourself – you just watch the birds do it.
Regarding the sex, drugs and rock n roll you referenced, I lived and enjoyed the rock experience, and I don’t see you losers that way at all. First, the sister fucking that is so rampant among chicken cucks doesn’t count. Second, I have yet to find any good music at a pit, so nix that. No, comparing a chicken cuck to a rocker isn’t just inaccurate, it’s laughable.
As for the drugs, those are of course rampant at the pits, and while you are unwilling to admit the truth, I frankly don’t blame you. If I was a chicken cuck, I’d be taking anything and everything I could get my hands on, because it would be hell to be you.
Your mention of “2 roosters bumping heads” shows how y’all can’t even admit to yourselves, much less others, as to what really happens, and what you really are. Again, I’ll cut you some slack, because if there is one thing my decades of work in animal protection has taught me, it is that animal abuse weakens the body, brain and soul, of the abuser. You are living proof.
You state that most people are surprised cockfighting still exists. To the degree that this is true, it is because even in their inbred, drug addled condition, chicken cucks know what they are – criminals and cowards, and they act accordingly.
You flow in society’s drains and gutters like the sewage you are. Meanwhile, real people are out experiencing life – not obsessing over the liquified shit oozing unseen beneath them.
I know that where people gather, especially in an “underground” setting, there will be ne’er-do-wells that are there because it gives them cover for their activities. If you truly [but you don’t] cared about these other activities you would be for the legalization of cocking so that proper decorum could be enforced. Having been to pits in [when it was legal there]AZ, LA, OR and Manila I can tell you that law enforcement/security is present and offender can be dealt with.
John Harless, as previously mentioned, is identified by a variety of public records and media reports as variously president of the California Association for the Preservation of Gamefowl, as of 2017, and treasurer as of 2024.
Harless’ comment arrived back-to-back with a WKRC report on the trial in Pike County, Ohio of cockfighter Billy Wagner for his role in the 2016 murders of seven members of the Rhoden family plus a girl named Hanna Gilley. See SHARK alert led to bust of cockfighter now charged with triple murder.
Harless’ call for “the legalization of cocking so that proper decorum could be enforced,” citing Manila, the Philippines, as an example reminds ANIMALS 24-7 that at least 34 Philippine cockfighting participants and perhaps as many as 100 are still missing after disappearing from legal cockfighting venues between April 2021 and January 2022.
Also of note, cockfighting was fully legal in Petatlán, Mexico, when six people were killed and 13 wounded in a gunfight on January 6, 2024. Those killings have of course been attributed to the presence of drug traffickers. But what does that tell anyone about the character and nature of cockfighting enthusiasts?