Cockfighting ads may be banned by Postal Service

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - The U.S. Postal Service has proposed changing its rules to ban cockfighting advertising from being sent through the mail.

Though legal cockfighting ended in the United States last year when Louisiana, the last holdout, banned it, two magazines dedicated to the practice — The Gamecock and Grit and Steel — are still published.

The change proposed by the Postal Service this week would label publications with ads for fighting birds or accessories, such as blades attached to the birds' feet, as "unmailable."

Another cockfighting magazine, The Feathered Warrior, ceased publication with its July issue. Publisher Verna Dowd of De Queen, who bought the magazine with her husband in 1964, said they worked many years without interference.

"I didn't bother anybody. The chicken people usually don't bother people. They just want to be left alone," said Dowd.

She blames the Humane Society — which has been pushing for the Postal Service to change its rules — for pressuring her out of business, though she said that losing her account to take payments via credit card was the last straw.

The Humane Society sued the Postal Service in 2007 in an effort to have the agency conform to federal animal welfare law. Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge James Robertson of the District of Columbia ordered the Postal Service to amend its rules in light of the law.

The Postal Service says it will take comment on the proposed change, included Monday in the Federal Register, through the first week in September.

The Humane Society says The Feathered Warrior and other publications were filled with ads for contraband for an illegal blood sport, though it said Wednesday that The Gamecock and Grit & Steel have largely eliminated ads for attachable knives and other gear that would be banned under the rule change.

J.C. Griffiths, general manager of The Gamecock in Hartford, said Wednesday that he wasn't sure how the rule change would affect his business. He wouldn't comment further.

A lawyer for The Gamecock, Ali Beydoun, discussing a separate Humane Society lawsuit to get Amazon.com to stop selling cockfighting magazines, said earlier that the magazine doesn't promote illegal cockfighting. Last year, The Gamecock agreed to request that Amazon stop selling the magazine.

Grit & Steel, which was available Wednesday on Amazon.com, could not be reached for comment.

Dowd said she still sells books, including one that draws heavily on writing from the magazine. She also still owns her magazine's archive, though no one has made her an offer for it and she said she has no plans to sell or reprint back issues.

She's saddened that the activity through which she made her living has been forced into decline.

"They've passed so many laws, people can't even raise or sell their chickens," she said.

Dowd, who worked as a printer as a young woman, said she and her husband lived in Chicago before buying the magazine.

"My husband liked the sport and we were looking for something we could do and live down South. We just didn't like it up there," she said.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.