WAYNE Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action, has lauded the recent dismissal of the cockfighting case in the District Court for the NMI.
Animal Wellness Action is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(4) organization with a mission of helping animals by promoting legal standards forbidding cruelty. Animal Wellness Action advocates for policies to stop dogfighting and cockfighting and other forms of malicious cruelty and to confront factory farming and other systemic forms of animal exploitation.
Recently, Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona granted the request of the U.S. Department of Justice and dismissed with prejudice the lawsuit filed by former Rep. Andrew Salas to challenge the federal ban on cockfighting.
In a 15-page decision and order on Friday, Judge Manglona said, “federal interests in regulating interstate commerce, preventing the spread of avian flu, and ensuring the humane treatment of animals outweigh the degree of intrusion into the internal affairs of the CNMI as it relates to the tradition of cockfighting.”
In an email, Pacelle said, “We formulated the 2018 law and we have now worked to introduce a new anti-animal fighting bill just last week in Congress. We had intervened in the Guam and Puerto Rico challenges to the Agricultural Improvement Act and were prepared to intervene in this case if Mr. Salas had survived the [U.S.] government’s motion to dismiss.”
“Two prior challenges to the 2018 federal law against staged animal fighting were met with unanimous disapproval by five federal courts, and a sixth court has added its voice,” he said.
“Mr. Salas is free to appeal, but he and other CNMI cockfighters should heed the law and stop hacking up animals for illegal gambling and the thrill of watching the bloodletting. The activity he refers to as a hobby and a tradition is a federal felony,” Pacelle added.
