UPC Protesters Attack Crow-Magnon Crabfeast
UPC successfully picketed the annual Maryland Gamefowl Breeders
Association Crabfeast on August 13, in Baltimore. UPC protest leader
Julie Beckham told The Baltimore Sun (Aug. 14, 1995, 1B-2B) that
while cockfighting is illegal in MD, "There's no question they're breeding
roosters to be used in cockfighting. According to The Sun, "She offered
as her evidence a photocopy of a nationally distributed cockfighting
publication known as Grit and Steel, in which yesterday's crab feast ...
was announced near an advertisement for 'gaffs,' long sharp blades that are
attached to roosters' spurs during cockfights."
Beckham told The Sun, "Cockfighters would have you believe that
[fighting] is the natural behavior of roosters. But studies of roosters in the
wild ... say that they never show the type of aggression you see in
cockfighting rings."
The Sun article was reprinted in the November 1995 issue of Grit and
Steel. The article concluded with Beckham's comment, "These groups and
these newsletters tend to romanticize what happens. There's nothing romantic
about it." Protesters from Protect Animal Life, Delaware Animal Rescue,
Maryland Animal Advocates, and Maryland Forum for Animals joined UPC in telling
the cockamaniacs to go croak.
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