EDITORIAL : NOTHING TO CROW ABOUT.

AS government spending goes, it's chicken feed.

Just the same, we are appalled by a report that it costs Los Angeles County taxpayers an estimated $30,000 to $50,000 a year to care for fighting roosters that are confiscated during gambling raids at illegal cockfights.

(We are even more appalled by the fact that this barbaric sport is still practiced in a supposedly civilized country, but that's another matter.)

Each year, from 200 to 300 of the birds are sent to a county animal shelter in Baldwin Park. The cost of board and care for each cock is about $2 a day.

This problem - no surprise - can be traced to existing law. Confiscated birds cannot be destroyed until their owners are convicted of cockfighting. This means that the county may be stuck with the birds - they must be kept in separate cages to prevent them from fighting - for months at a time while the cases go through the courts.

(Officials reported that 125 birds from a 1995 raid in Azusa were kept at the shelter for more than a year because the misdemeanor case against the owner took second priority to a federal drug charge against the suspect.)

Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block wants to stop this costly charade. State Sen. W.J. ``Pete'' Knight, R-Palmdale, has taken up his cause by introducing a bill that would allow the birds to be destroyed by lethal injection (providing a court order is obtained) after two months. That seems like a reasonable response to the problem.

It might seem as if Knight is going to a lot of effort to save chicken feed. But only birdbrains could favor the alternative: keeping stupid laws on the books on the theory that it's too much trouble to change or repeal them.