Animal Wellness Action on recent dog fighting indictments

ALBANY, Ga. (WALB) - On Thursday, Feb. 23, there were big dog fighting indictments in Southwest Georgia.

President of Animal Wellness Action Wayne Pacelle gives his thoughts on the indictments. Animal Wellness Action is a group that is trying to protect animals through federal, state and local legislation.

“Well, dog fighting is a barbaric activity, obviously terrible for the dogs, but it’s often associated with a wide range of other crimes: illegal gambling, narcotics, traffic, human-on-human violence. It’s not the first case in Southwest Georgia. You know, I was our case a number of years ago that stretched into Georgia from Alabama extended to Florida, many of these dog fighting rings across state boundaries. It’s why the federal government, the United States Department of Justice and federal law enforcement agencies, also work with county sheriffs in Georgia and other key law enforcement actors to stop these terrible crimes. This is a felony under state law. It’s a felony under federal law, and our society should not tolerate this behavior.

Your organization says that you see dog fighting and cockfighting as being rampant. What is your organization trying to do?

“Well, we are working on strengthening the laws and there is an anti-cockfighting law or bill that’s being considered in Atlanta right now to make conflicting an explicit crime is really only covered under the general anti-cruelty statute now. So that is very important legislation. We’re hoping that’s going to move and get to the governor. And beside. And we’ve got a federal bill called the Fight Act to upgrade enforcement capacity for the United States to crack down on these dog fighting and computing ranks. That is also crucial legislation. So we’ve got Georgia legislation, we’ve got congressional legislation, but then we have a rewards program. We give $2,500 to individuals who provide tips to us or law enforcement to, you know, smoke out these dog fighting, cockfighting rings. And if people are arrested, we payout that reward. We need citizens to be our eyes and ears and we want to reward people who are taking their citizenship responsibilities seriously. And I guess broadly, you know, we just want to create a culture where this activity is not tolerated, staged fights between animals. This, you know, should have ended in the days of the Romans. We shouldn’t have this in the 21st century.”

Wayne Pacelle. He’s with Animal Wellness Action. We appreciate you joining us. Thank you.

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