Urban chicken alert
June 8th, 2010
For those of us whose idea of “urban chicken” is either a piece of meat wedged between Styrofoam and cellophane, or a trip to KFC, we might be in for a shock. If, some time soon, you’re awakened by what sounds like Foghorn Leghorn’s barnyard cousin just remember there’s no snooze button. It will mean that supporters of residential chicken coops will have won their battle with city hall.
As it is, a Calgary city council committee last week rejected a bid to allow its citizens to keep chickens. According to this Herald story, there are three known chicken keepers in the city. One apparently lives in my neighbourhood, although I’ve neither seen heard, nor smelled any evidence of it. This “neighbour” of mine, carrying her toddler Safree, was quoted as saying “They can say whatever they want, man. I’m keeping my chickens”.
These self-styled “urban-hen advocates” tout their cause as a means of ensuring “food safety and supply”. One such, Paul Hughes is described as the “long-time frontman for Calgary’s urban-chicken movement”. How three people constitute a “movement” is not explained. Hughes, propping himself on a UN human rights declaration guaranteeing a right to food, says he’s willing to take this to “a judicial setting”.
So, looking at it from the narrow, biased, jaded view of the taxpayer we have a “movement” of three people that has already taken up X amount of our paid councillor’s time about to burn up more tax dollars with a court appeal. Marvellous.
Sure, there is the Libertarian argument that people should be as free as reasonably possible. But let’s put this into context. This is a city that can’t remove snow; that builds roads only to impede traffic with concrete barriers and speed humps; that sets out scads of bedding plants every year to be consumed by frost after 60 days; in short, that squanders money in every conceivable manner.
“I don’t have Salmonella. I don’t have avian flu”, commented Mr. Hughes. Well, that’s reassuring. I guess those periodic quarantines in the Fraser Valley, with thousands of gassed birds dumped into pits, those are just aberrations.
But even if they are, it doesn’t negate the simple point - why are we talking about this? Why is the city spending their time/money on it? Next somebody will want to emulate Siegfried and Roy and … wait for it … have a Siberian tiger in their garage.
Oh no, wait a minute, that would be covered by Calgary’s cat by-law (where it spells out that “cat” means “the male or female of the feline family”), which makes it an offence to have a cat “running at large”. And to take another digression, I’ll remind readers that this city controls cats, but not coyotes…
All of which is to say that, just because “urban hens” have been stopped for now, there is no predicting - based on the city’s past and present foolishness - whether or not you’ll see a neighbourhood barnyard near you in the future. If the pro-chicken movement burgeons to, say, four people, maybe we’ll start the process all over again.
To finish, may I remind Calgary readers that there’s a municipal election this fall? Good luck.
