South Carolina’s penalties for cockfighting are among the lowest among the 48 states that outlaw it, John P. Goodwin says.

The Humane Society of the United States’ deputy manager for animal fighting issues is traveling the state this week to raise awareness of the issue and support for stiffer penalties.

Cockfighting pits two or more roosters, bred and drugged for aggression and fitted with razor-sharp knives or ice-pick like gaffs on their legs, in a fight to the death for entertainment and gambling purposes.

Cockfighting is now a felony in both neighboring states, Georgia and North Carolina, but in South Carolina it’s a misdemeanor carrying a $100 fine or 30 days in jail.

Goodwin said a $100 fine “isn’t going to be a deterrent” when “people can walk away with $10,000 or $15,000 from a single night during a cockfighting derby.”

Last year, former House Speaker David Wilkins and Rep. James H. “Jim” Harrison, R-Columbia, introduced H. 3344, which adds game fowl to the Animal Fighting and Baiting Act and makes cockfighting a felony on third offense.

“Penalties should be severe enough to deter conduct,” Harrison said this week.

“It was our understanding that people who engaged in cockfighting were willing to be caught and suffer a very minor penalty as long as they could continue cockfighting,” he said.

“It was only when we threatened to get the penalty up to a level that would be severe enough to get them to quit cockfighting that we got their attention,” Harrison said.

Goodwin said South Carolina cockfighters have “so little fear” of the current fine that they went to the Statehouse and “proclaimed they’re involved in this activity” as they lobbied against stricter penalties last year.

The House passed H. 3344 last year. The Senate will take it up this year. Goodwin said he hopes the Senate will not only pass it, but strengthen it.

State Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, serves on the subcommittee that will consider the cockfighting bill.

He said Monday that he was not prepared to take a position on it because he hasn’t had a chance to read the proposal.

“Until we have a subcommittee meeting, I have an open mind about it,” he said. The meeting has not yet been scheduled. At the moment, property tax reform measures are consuming his time and attention.

Of course, one of the state’s leading universities uses the gamecock as its mascot, and Sumter calls itself the Gamecock City after a famous general whose nickname was the Gamecock.

Goodwin declined to criticize university students who want to call themselves the Gamecocks.

But making animals fight each other “tops the list” of “egregious abuses” that the Humane Society is trying to stop, he said.

“The school mascot deserves better than being put in a fight to the death,” Goodwin said.

Goodwin said cockfighting is legal in only two states, Louisiana and New Mexico, and federal law has made it illegal to transport fighting cocks across state lines since 2002.

That’s the year former S.C. Rep. Charles Sharpe of Wagener became agriculture commissioner, and it’s also the year Sharpe accepted $10,000 from an organization involved in breeding and raising game birds in exchange for helping the group avoid legal trouble. Sharpe lost his job and drew a two-year prison sentence for extortion and lying to a federal officer.

Cockfighting is harmful beyond sheer cruelty, Goodwin said. It promotes gambling, and it creates health problems far beyond the fighting rinks and breeding places.

For instance, a few people elsewhere in the world have contracted avian influenza — bird flu — after handling game birds who had been involved in staged fights, Goodwin said.

Too, a lot of dogs who have been confiscated at dogfighting and hog-dog pits have been found to have pseudorabies, Goodwin said. Pseudorabies is a viral infection that can cause sudden death in dogs and cats, but does not cause illness in humans, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

After State Attorney General Henry McMaster issued an opinion that hog-dog fighting was illegal, animal rights activists thought the matter was closed, until a Chester County jury acquitted two people of charges of pitting hogs against dogs last fall, Goodwin said.

“If a jury thought (the law was unclear), then we need to do something,” Goodwin said. That something is Senate Bill 229, which would make it a felony to engage in or attend a hog-dog event.

“Most South Carolinians are against animal fighting,” Goodwin said. He hopes they will take the next step and ask their state senators to support the above referenced legislation.

On the Web: www.hsus.org; www.scstatehouse.net.

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