 with Wayne Pacell. Pacelli or Pacell? I still don't get it right. Pacelli. Pacelli. All right. Okay. And he is an executive with the Animal Wellness Action out of Washington, D.C. and he is here to talk to us about cockfighting arrests on Molokai, I guess in May, which is very interesting. So what is animal wellness action? Because, you know, we need to be concerned about animal wellness. We need to be concerned about every part of the animal kingdom. But what do you guys do about it? Well, we concentrate on establishing legal protections for animals to forbid a variety of forms of animal cruelty to domesticated animals and also to wild animals. But then I think, Jay, very importantly, we work to enforce our laws. The laws without enforcement are simply slips of paper. And with this asymmetrical relationship we have with humans and animals, that we hold all the power, we hold all the cards, we can do whatever we want to these animals, we need restraints put on people and the law serves that function. I'm thinking of the Attenborough movies, of which there are a number on cable these days. For standing for the proposition, which I'm sure you guys live in, and that is, you know, it's all integrated. It's all part of the same geo environment. And we need to protect the animals because they're part of that environment. You know, the earth spent hundreds of thousands of years developing its flora, fauna, animals, humans, what have you. And we can't afford to lose them. And we are losing them by way of extinction and one kinds of brutality or another by human beings to animals. This is very tragic because you can't bring it back. Is that part of your mission? Oh, without question, Jay, you know, we all breathe the same air. We drink water. It has to be clean. We depend on planetary health for survival. And animals and humans are no different in that respect. I think in another way, it's important to remember that, you know, animals have a heartbeat, just like we do. They feel pain. They suffer. They are not just machines that are in some endless quest for mates and gathering food. They have emotions. They feel terror when threatened. They feel happiness when they play together. They feel love for their family members. It's just a human construct for us to think, oh, my God, humans are here and then animals are so different. Any of us who've had a dog or a cat, any of us who pay attention to nature and see wild animals, knows that this is a continuity of life, that the differences are differences of degree and not kind. And that if we truly are a moral species, if humanity means something and the root word of humanity is humane, we can show compassion and decency to the other creatures who share this planet. We can be the lords and do horrible things or we can be the lords and do good things. I choose the latter. Of course. So how did you get into this? How did you get to be the executive director of Adderall Wellness Action? Are you a founder? What drives you? I am a founder and I've been involved. I'm 55 years old, but I started an animal welfare group when I was a college student and undergraduate at Yale University. It was going to go to law school, but got pulled into doing animal advocacy. I then have run a number of the major national animal welfare groups. I've run 40 ballot measures, helped pass 100 federal laws and amendments, nearly 2000 state laws, negotiated agreements with SeaWorld to stop their breeding of orcas and Walmart to stop the inhumane treatment of animals in their supply chain, and hundreds of other agreements. So it's been a lifelong passion of mine. I wrote a couple of New York Times bestselling books. One of them is called The Bond, our kinship of animals are called to defend them. And in that book, I argue that we humans have an instinctive connection to nature and animals. You can see this as a child, we're drawn to animals and we're drawn to them for a variety of reasons, but we actually have within us social bonding hormones that connect us to other people. It's why loneliness is a problem for us. Solitary confinement as a containment strategy in prisons can do a number on us emotionally. We need social interactions in order to be healthy. Animals are part of that. We crave interactions with nature and animals. So that gives us a head start in doing the right thing for animals, but it's easy for us to get brainwashed. It's easy for us to dismiss the concerns of animals. And what we try to do with animal wellness action is remind people of the immense threats that exist, whether it's factory farming or horse slaughter or testing on animals that's needless and duplicative or trade in wildlife. And yes, illegal animal fighting, dog fighting and cock fighting, which are horrible forms of human entertainment and gambling for animals suffer and die for no good reason. Yeah, true. So what is the scope of the organization? Are you worldwide? We're worldwide and we're pretty new, we're three and a half years old, but we have some of the most veteran people who've ever worked in animal protection. And again, it's all animals. We certainly do a lot in the United States Congress working to advance probably 20 or 30 major new policies like we're seeking a ban on mink farming. Mink are killed for their fur. There's been an incredible circumstance where we've learned that mink are the most susceptible mammal to the COVID virus, the SARS-CoV-2. There have been outbreaks of this virus at mink farms throughout the United States and all over the world. This is a threat to keep these animals on factory farm-like conditions and especially outrageous that we're doing this just to produce mink coats when we don't need them. We have other textiles we can use to adorn us, keep us warm, keep us stylish. Almost all of the pelts that we raised in the United States are being sent to China because there's no domestic market for these pelts. But we work on so many things. We're working to create an animal cruelty crimes unit at the Department of Justice, the US Department of Justice. We're working to stop war slaughter. We're working to stop needless testing on animals for drug development when there are new alternative innovative methods that can improve the safety and efficacy of drugs. So it's big. We work at the state level and we work internationally. We've got a very important campaign called kangaroos are not shoes. The largest mammalian slaughter in the world is the shooting of kangaroos by commercial shooters. And the main use of the kangaroos is for their skins or shoes by Nike, Adidas, New Balance to make soccer cleats. Two million kangaroos killed a year, including 400,000 joeys for the babies who are found in the pouches of their mothers after they're slain. This is outrageous that fortune 500 companies like Nike and Adidas would be sourcing wild animals from their native habitats through commercial kills. Like what we did to the buffalo or the bison in the 19th century in the mid section of the North American continent. We massacred bison to produce coats and other products. That's what the Australians are doing right now with kangaroos to make shoes. And companies that all of us have patronized like Nike and Adidas are in the thick of this. They're the ones driving the killing, even though they're not pulling the trigger. Are you into poaching in Africa? Oh, without question. We're actually helping Asian elephants now because in Thailand there are more working captive elephants there than any other country in the world. And about 3,500 of them are conscripted into taking tourists around with 12 tourists on their back or they do circus type tricks. But when the pandemic hit and Thailand shut down tourism, those elephants haven't had people to support them. They're starving. So we are supporting Thailand-based groups to feed elephants and we're feeding about 1,200 elephants right now. But in Africa it's a different set of threats. It's more poaching, as you know. There's also legal killing through trophy hunting where Americans go over there and shoot elephants for their tusks. We tell Native Africans, Black Africans, don't kill the elephants for their ivory, which is what we shouldn't be doing. But then we're allowing these United States rich hunters to go over there and shoot elephants so they can bring back the tusks. I find that terribly inconsistent. I think it is an attack on nature that these people shoot the largest land mammals in the world just for their egos and to mount these tusks in their homes. So yes, we challenge so many forms of institutionalized cruelty for the state in the sense the government or major corporations are causing harm to animals. And again, they can't speak up for themselves. We have to be their proxies and that's what we do through the courts, through the lawmaking bodies, through the court of public opinion, by publishing science-based reports, by publishing investigations. We did a major investigation that we released in September about cockfighting in Hawaii and how the cockfighting community is enormous in Hawaii. And it is a spoken hub relationship throughout the Pacific Rim that birds are shipped to Hawaii from Asian countries and shipped from the mainland US to Hawaii. Then to go to these Asian countries and there is significant illegal cockfighting activities on the islands in Hawaii as well. It's illegal to ship a bird from Hawaii. It's easy to find it. It's easy to determine that somebody is trying to do that. So question is, is there anybody trying to stop them from shipping? Well, Jay, it's a very insightful comment. I had worked to make it a federal felony, not just to fight animals in the United States. It's a federal law, but also to possess animals for fighting, to transport them to use the US Postal Service. What these guys do in Oklahoma and Alabama and California and other states is they pack birds in boxes, these fighting roosters. They're very strong, tough animals and they send them to the Philippines or to Guam or to Vietnam with Hawaii being the stopover point. It's also the destination for a fair number of birds as well. But this is illegal, but the United States is not doing enough to stop it. We provided incontrovertible evidence. A lot of these people are so arrogant that they openly discuss on Facebook and other social media platforms their sale of fighting animals, their participation in fighting derbies. There's a big derby, the biggest one in the world called the World Slasher Cup in the Philippines and cockfighters from throughout the United States go to the World Slasher Cup. These guys talk about it. If you're a good cockfighter in their parlance, then you win at derbies. And if you win, the offspring of those winning animals go for sometimes thousands of dollars. It's just like horse racing. If your horses win on the track, then you can sell the offspring to other people interested in competition. That's what happens with cockfighting. If you're a breeder, you have to be fighting because that's the only way you're going to make money. And there is global trafficking in fighting birds. The United States is, without question, the cockfighting breeding hub of the world. Most of the major successful cockfighters in the world are here. We are shipping birds from the mainland US to Mexico to the Philippines. Those are the two biggest foreign destinations, but they're going to 30 or 40 other countries, probably more. But Hawaii is really at the center. We got shipping records from the Guam Department of Agriculture about 18 months ago. And we then looked at them. There were about 9,000 birds shipped to Guam. Now, Guam is a small US territory, about 170,000 people in the Western Pacific. So this should not be a huge hub. 9,000 birds were shipped just to Guam. It's probably, I mean, it's hundreds of thousands of birds are being shipped from the mainland to the Pacific Rim every year. So this is just a small indicator. The number one shipping state by number of cockfighters was Hawaii with Oklahoma, second, and Alabama third. Oklahoma had the largest volume of birds. So the cockfighters that were shipped a greater number, but no state had more individuals shipping birds. Guam, all of it's a felony. Guam knows exactly what's going on, but the governor is a pro-cockfighting governor, and other politicians are basically defending cockfighting. We worked to pass a new law in Congress to forbid any shipment of fighting animals to the US territories in 2018. It took effect in December of 2019, so about a year and a half ago, and we've been investigating this trade and found that Hawaii was again, you know, central to it. The United States needs to do more to enforce our laws. US attorneys, federal law enforcement, whether it's the FBI or the USDA's Office of Inspector General or the US Postal Inspection Service, these birds are being openly shipped. We know what is going on. This is what was so distinctive about Guam. Guam has no poultry industry. They have no egg laying hen operations. They have no poultry operations, which are the meat birds. They have no showfowl industry. The only reason that you'd be selling 9,000 roosters to Guam is for fighting. And I personally went to a cockfight at the major venue on Guam. It's called the Dome. I was there. I was there way way back in the time I was in the service, and I was a concrete sort of a coliseum affair. There were a lot of bleachers and concrete benches and the like, right? And a lot of people, hundreds, thousands could sit in this place. And down at the bottom of it was the cockfighting ring. And they were calling out bets. I don't know if it still happens this way. They were calling out bets and waving money in the air based on what they thought would happen in the fight. And it was brutal. It was brutal, but people loved it. They were so involved in it. It was like a national sport in Guam. And I said to myself, I didn't stay very long. I really couldn't tolerate it. But I said to myself, what is going on here? This is really not Guam, and yet it is Guam. Is that still happening? Well, it's amazing, Jay. You went because I went to one of the last supposedly legal cockpits. It really wasn't legal, but the new federal law that really clamped down on it that cut off any pretense for it was enacted, as I said, at the end of 2019. I went in September, the end of September 2019. And yes, the bleachers were full. The folks were huddled around this little pit, they call it, that plexiglass around it. There's a dirt floor. And they've got a board in the back where they list the birds and the fight schedule. And I think this was a two cock derby where people entered two birds into the fight and they gamble on the outcome and then people win a bunch of money if they happen to be the winningest fighter that night. And yes, they were screaming and hollering and people were enjoying this blood sport between animals. I mean, think of all of the forms of entertainment that exist in our world, whether it's live entertainment or it's digital entertainment, or it's audio entertainment. Yet these people find the need to engage in animal fighting when it's a felony offense. So the dome closed. But I've just gotten reports recently that they are back at it. And Guamanian authorities are not doing anything about it. The United States needs to do something about it. We have the United States Attorney's Office in Guam and the Northern Mariana's Islands, based in based in Guam that covers the Northern Mariana's. And, you know, the United States has law enforcement officials who are in Hawaii, they need to take that eight hour flight to Guam and stop this open defiance of the United States. Why do people do this? Is it cultural? I mean, I would imagine some cultures like it more than others. And there must be something in the culture or something in, I don't know, Schadenfreude comes to mind, you know, of sort of enjoying the demise and the pain and the atrocity. Well, I'm wondering if you've ever looked into why people go to a fight like that? I have looked into it and I've thought about it a lot. There's no single answer because everyone is different. But I think that we humans, you know, have conflicting impulses and instincts. And I mentioned I wrote a book called The Bond where I argued that we have natural instincts to be fascinated with animals and that fascination can lead to compassion or that fascination can lead to abuse. I mean, the people who are interested in cockfighting are really interested in the birds. They love the look of the birds. They love the toughness of the birds. They call it gameness, the characteristic of the birds that causes them to fight even when they're injured. So these people are really dazzled by the birds, but they have no compassion for them. I mean, they're fine to see them get hacked up, animals that they raise, you know, for months or years. We should explain that on the leg, or maybe it's both legs, I don't remember, of the given fighting cock, they attach a knife, a very sharp razor sharp knife that sticks out 90 degrees from the leg of the bird. And the bird, if the bird brings his leg up like that, you can slash the other bird. And they, they eviscerate themselves that way. They do, Jay, you're correct. So the type of fight is defined by the type of weapon. So it might be a short knife fight where the knife is about an inch and a half, or it might be a long knife fight where the knife might be two and a half with three inches, or it could be a gaff fight. A gaff fight is like a curved ice pick. So they shave down the natural spur on the rooster's leg, and then they strap the knife or the gaff with a leather strap onto the bird's legs, and they weigh the bird. So they're supposed to weigh the same, they've got the same weapons on, and that's supposed to, you know, be the fairness of the fight. The handlers have them and they, they put the birds beak to beak multiple times to incite them and to enrage them because these are territorial animals. You know, one male rooster darts a bunch of hens. So their instinct is to be aggressive toward other roosters. They stoke that, and then they put them down and they fight. And usually the fights don't last very long because the weapons are so lethal. So they could gouge them out. I thought you had a minute or two, right? It's not very long. Yeah, some of them that go long, they, they pull them out of the main pit and they have side pits, which they call drag pits, and they finish the fight there. But most of the fights that I saw were just, you know, one to three minutes. And, you know, they results in one in one of the fighting cocks dying. They die, they fight to the death. Yeah, they fight to the death. They get stabbed. They, you know, get lung wounds. They get other heart wounds. You know, one thing that often happens to these fights is that if fluid builds up after they sustain an internal injury, the confederate will put his mouth over the bird's mouth and try to suck the fluids that are, that are in the passageway and all the way down in the lungs to try to revive the bird for a short time so he can continue to fight. Think about risky practices. You know, we've just gone through a terrible global pandemic and that pandemic probably related to a live wildlife market and another form of mistreatment of animals where animals are taken from the wild and, and brought to live wildlife markets so people can buy them where they're often butchered right in front of people and they eat these wild animals or they're taken from the wild and they're put in cages and then bred and then brought to the live wildlife market. That is a dangerous circumstance for zoonotic diseases because 75% of, of all emerging diseases come from animals and they jump the species barrier. So here you have a behavior where birds who basically have influenza and that influenza is the type of influenza that afflicts us when we get the flu. They could be hatching a new form of avian influenza that can jump the species barrier and here you have a perfect set of interactions to transmit. Oh, you're right. We are, we are making a movie about this very same spillover effect and relationship with climate change and COVID. But let me, let me go, let me go to the next point which we really should cover and that is Molokai which I guess falls in the county of Maui and you made a report and ultimately the authorities arrested some, some people who were involved with cock fighting there and, and I guess we're going to see now what happens in terms of the prosecution. Can you talk about that so people know? Well, unfortunately Hawaii is one of just eight states that has misdemeanor penalties under state law. 42 states make cock fighting felony but Hawaii has not and that's because of the power and, and influence of the cock fighting community. I mean, it's hard to believe that you could even talk about the influence of the cock fighting community, but for years there's been, there've been efforts in the legislature in Honolulu to try to make it a felony and it's been ported because these people say, oh, we're just, you know, this is a cultural tradition, this is what we do. But as I said, it's a federal felony to fight animals, possess them, ship them, trade in the fighting implements. So my hat is off to the local authorities who are enforcing the law. It's the tip of the iceberg in Hawaii. You go around and you see these little A-frame huts or barrels with roosters tethered to them. If you drive around the big island or you drive around the other islands, you see these birds. Those are cock fighting birds. There's no other logical explanation for it. As I said, it's a hub and, you know, I knew, I knew a fellow on the big island who had his backyard, which was substantial. He had cages where he, he raised them and bred them, hundreds of them. That's the way it works. Yeah. I mean, he was one of a number of people in the network that did that. It was a side job for them. Yeah. No, there are hundreds and hundreds of people in Hawaii doing it, perhaps thousands. Honestly, it sounds like an exaggeration to say thousands, it's not. When there was an outbreak of virulent Newcastle disease 20 years ago in Los Angeles County, Southern California, it's a big county, a lot of people, a lot of land area. Authorities went door to door because they were trying to contain this avian influenza that could affect commercial poultry operations, pet owners, et cetera. They went door to door and after they were done, the Calvary Department Food Nag and USDA, the U.S. Department of Ag, said there were 10,000 backyard cock fighting operations in Los Angeles County alone. Hawaii is one of the hubs in the United States. So this recent raid in Molokai is very important. It really needs to be just one in a series. And these people will get the message of law enforcement cracks down, and especially if the feds crack down because it's a federal felony. Well, do you expect that's going to happen? So this was in Molokai, this was part of Maui and it was, I guess, the prosecutor had to be involved and there were arrests and maybe the first time or the first time in a long time that that happened. And I think it's in part due to the report that you wrote about the existence of cock fighting in Hawaii. And what strikes me is, will there be more? And will the feds look at the state action here and take their own action? Because it sounds like they could. I think with animal wellness action on the case, certainly yes. We're not going to let the United States just be in the tentative to this issue. This is a form of animal cruelty. It's a threat to our global health, because of the global movement of these fighting birds and the potential rise of a new emerging avian influenza. It is often associated with other criminal activity, not just gambling, but it's very often bound up with narcotics traffic, human on human violence. I mean, people who are watching and enjoying these fights, are they just going to be a good neighbor to you in general? I doubt it. And I think that we have good reasons when we stop animal cruelty, we make our community safer. The people who are involved in dog fighting are often very violent individuals. We need to stop these for the benefit of the animals, but also for the benefit of our communities. I think it's a secondary effect of gambling. Can you talk about that? Gambling is a widespread activity, but it leaves a wake of people who lose their assets, who disrupt their families. I had a family member who was a compulsive gambler, and it was horrible for the family. And I see it time and time again, and then of course, if you have gambling debts and you could get involved with organized crime, it really can spiral from there. So our organization is not per se an anti-gambling group, but I've seen it. And I think that, again, this is not a form of legalized gambling. We have legalized gambling with casinos and with lotteries and even with horse racing. We don't have that in Hawaii. It's odd. It's ironic that cuckbody exists. Gambling is a big motivator for people to participate. At the same time, gambling here is illegal, flat out. Yes, right. That's right. And you do not have a cock fight without gambling. It is bound up with it as much as you have the knives and the gaps on the birds. No one would be interested if the birds didn't have knives and gaps on their legs. No one is interested in cock fighting if you're not gambling. So what about these arrests? Where do they go from here? This is a, I mean, you're talking about sending a message, but the message needs to have a conclusion. It needs to have a conviction and a punishment, assuming that these allegations are true, which I mentioned they are. What happens now? And what will you, Animal Wellness Action, do to follow that story? Well, we will be communicating with the district attorney, taking the case and offer expert witness backup, because we have experienced people, one of the most experienced people in the United States, the most experienced person in the United States in looking at animal fighting crimes. So we can say, hey, these are all the telltale markers of this. Don't be hoodwinked by this notion that, oh, I just have these birds because I'm showing the birds in derbies and meats. It's just not true. So we will write to the district attorney and offer support. Again, we're going to urge the legislature, as we did in September when we released our report, to adopt felony level penalties. That's a real deterrent. People who lose their freedom by engaging in cock fights are stupid. There is just no reason to threaten your freedom for this frivolous form of entertainment, where animals are killing each other in front of you. It makes no sense for any civilized person. Well, I'd like to follow the story with you, Wayne. These prosecutions and any other prosecutions, your efforts in the Hawaii legislature to make it a felony offense. And for that matter, the state of affairs in terms of animal cruelty, cock fighting in Hawaii, I think it came off the plantations for a lot of people. It was a popular way to spend your time talking about entertainment, but there's no reason for it now. And if there was a time when you could accept it, that time has long passed. It cannot be accepted and I admire your organization, your work. And I hope we can circle back with further developments nationally and that affect Hawaii. Well, I thank you for that really clear statement and recitation of the problems with it. And I really believe that the vast majority of people know that it's wrong. But without awareness, without action, these people will persist. Yeah, it's an interesting name you've got for the organization because it includes the word action. And it means we're not kidding around. Wayne Pacelli, animal wellness action, executive director. Thank you so much for joining us, Wayne. Jay, what a pleasure. Thank you. Aloha.