A shipment of roosters, raised on farms throughout the American South and Southwest, is loaded into crates and given to a front company with an unremarkable name somewhere in a warehouse in the Dallas area. Those birds are on a commercial flight headed for the Philippines in a matter of days. Most of them die within a week.
This isn’t a covert operation operating out of a lawless border town. It travels through major airports and is handled like regular cargo by airlines like Korean Air and Philippine Airlines. Despite the fact that transporting fighting birds across state or national borders has been illegal since 2007, the pipeline has been running for years without much opposition. It has not resulted in a single criminal prosecution. Few people outside of the cockfighting community were even aware of the scope of the situation until recently.
This began to change in early 2026 when Animal Wellness Action undercover investigators went to Manila for the World Slasher Cup, one of the biggest cockfighting competitions worldwide. The transparency of what they recorded there was startling.
Over six days, there were about 800 fights. Walking the floors, American participants talked candidly about the foreign win records and bloodlines of their birds. Referees who allowed games to continue until one or both roosters had been fatally stabbed by the long blades attached to their legs.
It is difficult to interpret that scene as a singular cultural oddity. Beyond animal abuse, the cockfighting industry, especially its global branch, is deeply entwined with networks of organized crime. In the last year alone, dozens of people in the Philippines have been killed due to debts from cockfighting. There have been bodies recovered from lakes. The operations of gambling syndicates are practically unpunished. The American cockfighters who transport birds into this setting are more than just spectators. They are vendors.
The domestic image is not much more tidy. In support of the FIGHT Act, the National Sheriffs’ Association stated that cockfighting investigations frequently turn up evidence of drug use, illegal firearms, money laundering, child abuse, and intimidation of witnesses. These are not anomalies. They are patterns. A single fighting rooster can fetch up to $3,000 on the other end of the international bird trade, which is the most lucrative aspect of the entire operation and the source of funding for everything else.
The airline lifeline is intended to be severed by the new No Flight, No Fight Act, H.R. 7371. The bill, which is being led by Texas Representative Troy Nehls, establishes strict legal guidelines that forbid commercial carriers from transporting adult roosters that are meant for fighting. It concentrates enforcement at the front end, where the current law has always been weakest—before the birds ever board a plane. Supporters of the bill contend that airlines shouldn’t, even unintentionally, serve as cargo services for criminal networks.
The story of cruelty and crime often obscures the public health aspect. Outside of any controlled agricultural channel, fighting birds travel. They travel across international borders without the biosecurity safeguards that regulate the lawful trade in poultry. The uncontrolled international movement of live birds is, at the very least, a major risk given the persistent threat of avian influenza, a disease that has already decimated commercial flocks and driven egg prices to uncomfortable highs. This is an unwarranted risk to the entire U.S. food system, according to an executive from a major egg producer.
It remains to be seen if Congress takes swift action on the No Flight, No Fight Act. Although there is bipartisan support, it frequently stalls. This time, it feels different because the investigative foundation is being established in public, including the footage from Manila, the named airlines, the named front companies, and the documented smuggling rings. When the details are this precise, it is more difficult to ignore them.
By remaining silent and diffuse, the cockfighting industry has withstood decades of legal pressure. It was practically given wings by the airlines. Cockfighting won’t stop if that pipeline is grounded. However, it may be the most significant intervention anyone has ever attempted.
