In a move that should make Peta happy, Thailand is cracking down on cock fighting. But it’s not because of animal rights issues. No, the government has discovered that the resilient fighting machines have a higher-risk of being bird-flu carriers,:

The government has imposed strict measures to try to curb the spread of bird flu, including restricting movements of fighting cocks and eliminating a traditional way of raising ducks by moving large flocks around.

Fighting cocks and ducks were more resilient to the virus than farmed chickens and could pass on the disease without showing symptoms, Yukol said.

The government had set a March, 2005 deadline for halting the large-scale movement of 3,700 flocks of ducks that owners moved around to new feeding grounds, but extended it to December after owners protested and might extend it again, officials said.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Malaysia, the government is having difficulty in preventing the trafficking of the fighting cocks of Indonesia. (Mainichi Daily via H5N1):

Malaysian villagers on Borneo island are smuggling pet birds and fighting cocks from neighboring Indonesia, despite a government ban meant to keep the country free of bird flu, a news report said Wednesday.

Veterinary authorities in Malaysia’s eastern Sarawak state — which shares an extensive land border with Indonesia’s Kalimantan province — will cull smuggled birds and any local poultry that had contact with them, Sarawak Deputy Chief Minister George Chan told The Star newspaper.

“Pet birds and fighting cocks are being smuggled across the border at illegal entry points,” Chan said. “We have already given a lot of advice to the people near the border, but the dangers of disregarding the ban do not seem to matter to some of them.”

Images stolen from a great photo essay site of a cock fight in Uzbekistan, discovered via (warning, make sure you have safe search on when searching for “cock fight” on Google images).

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