I was so happy for the City of Vancouver today when I read that city council unanimously voted to allow the keeping of chickens in backyards in urban Vancouver.

Go Vancouver!!

Being a past resident (and hopefully, resident again after the Olympics, since I refuse to be there for such a – for lack of a better term – shit show), Vancouver will always hold a dear part of my heart, even despite it’s problems (most people would speak of the current gang shootings going on, but I’m thinking more of the outrageous rent costs and bad bus service). So when what I consider one of my two home towns does something to actually back up all their fancy talk of “sustainable urban living” it makes me proud.

I’m not so proud of the town I’m currently living in though. My current town, which touts itself on being forward thinking, green, into sustainability and all that, has really done little to further any of those causes. I could go into an extremely long diatribe as to why it hasn’t (a great location for an indoor year round farmer’s market to support local merchants which is being sold off to some industrial mill or some such crap is at the top of the list), but one of the main sore points for me is that in this town, where it is entirely feasible to do so, we are not allowed to keep chickens in the back yard (or even bees for that matter, which is ridiculous). Hell, if you have more than two pets of the same kind, it’s technically considered livestock, and they could come and fine you if they so choose (although I have yet to hear of this actually happening, I’ve read the bylaws, and yes, they state exactly that).

I’ve wanted chickens since we moved into our house a year ago, and have more than enough room for it. But, I can’t have chickens, not even one or two, because its against city bylaws. I have a problem with people and places who say they support one thing (in this case, green sustainable living practises) but in fact do everything they can below board to prevent such things from taking place (like not allowing people to keep chickens).

There are people currently in my town who keep a low profile and keep chickens in their yards. One of them in fact, lives quite close to me, and never are you met with any of the problems that all these nay-sayers against chickens in an urban environment say you’ll be met with (there’s certainly no increase of rats in the area – hell, I haven’t even seen a mouse, I don’t smell anything when going by their house, nor is there cawing at 4 in the morning because they don’t keep roosters). One of the biggest things I hear against keeping chickens in cities are these:

1. Increase of predators
2. Chicken welfare (people don’t know how to take care of them).

Let’s look at these two points:

1. Predators, especially in my area, are already out and about. Every year there’s bears wandering around due to people not cleaning up their fruit trees, and people who leave their garbage out at night during summer. Coyotes? They’re around anyway. And don’t even get me started on the cougars who come down looking for cats whose owners let them stay out and roam around all night. If you’re saying predators are the reasons not to have chickens, we might as well ban all fruit trees and cats, as well as keeping your garbage outside your house at all times.

2. Chicken welfare. Yes, this is an issue, but it’s no more an issue than people keep dogs, cats, hamsters, fish, guinea pigs, or any other live animal. There’s people who don’t know how to take care of their pets properly, and there’s lots who do. If you’re worried about animal welfare and your answer is to just not let people have those animals, then by that same train of thought, nobody should be allowed to keep any kind of pet. Ever.

It’s flawed logic, and that’s the problem. I’d wager (a very large sum) to say the vast majority of people who are interested and would keep chickens, are the kind of people who would do everything they can to ensure the welfare of their animals.

New York City, Seattle, Richmond, Burnaby, Victoria, and now Vancouver are the big cities who allow chickens to be kept within urban limits. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of any large scandals coming from any of these cities where somebody was keeping chickens in a horribly unfit way. The animal control officer in Victoria says he gets about 12 calls a year, and most of those are complaints from neighbours about flies and smell.

Compare those 12 complaints, to all the benefits people in Victoria who do grow chickens get. There’s the owners themselves who have a steady and economical way to provide themselves and their family with protein. Not only that, but the chicken manure is a great additive to the soil which creates less dependency on chemical and synthetic fertilizers and pesticides (since healthy soil makes healthy plants). On top of all of that, it’s doing its part to say no to factory farm hens (which are awful, horrible environments for chickens – funny how the BCSPCA and Animal Welfare people don’t seem to be going against factory farms as vigorously as they should be). Lastly, there’s a huge amount of waste created by having to truck all those eggs from hundreds of miles away to a grocery store near you. You want to lower fossil fuel emissions? You start by allowing people to walk out to their back yard to get some eggs. As it stands now eggs have to be usually trucked in from miles away (tens or hundreds of miles), and on top of that, every time you drive to the grocery store? Yep, there’s more fossil fuel emissions.

It’s absolutely ridiculous to say no to allowing laying hens into an urban (or semi-urban) environment. It baffles the mind how just now people are starting to yell and scream about this. And what about the individual’s rights? The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms lists a whole slew of rights that should fully allow us to keep chickens. What about the individual’s right to security? Does that not include the security to feed yourself, especially at a lower cost? What about freedom of belief and freedom of conscience? I think the right to keep chickens fully goes under these two basic charter rights. And then there’s freedom of expression. I don’t think it’s too far a stretch to say that the freedom of expression should allow me to express my ideas of sustainable living in my terms by guaranteeing myself a constant and healthy supply of eggs from chickens I know aren’t caged, stressed, and never see the light of day.

I’m all fired up, it should be obvious.

I have a city councillor on the same block as me, and one who is a great believer in sustainable living. Perhaps I should have a talk with her.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 11:29 am and is filed under Grand Ideas, Green Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.