Cockfighting, dogfighting, and other animal fighting practices cause severe suffering to tens of millions of animals globally, often operating openly in regions where they remain legal or weakly enforced.
Animal fighting causes deliberate, sustained, severe suffering in the most direct possible sense — animals are specifically trained, conditioned, and selected for their ability to inflict and withstand damage, and are then forced to fight until one is too injured to continue or is killed. The welfare emergency of cockfighting and dogfighting is not subtle — it involves profound suffering as both cause and intended outcome. Addressing it requires law enforcement combined with community engagement that addresses the cultural and social contexts in which fighting is normalized, and economic alternatives for those whose livelihoods are connected to the practice.