Chickens won’t be coming home to roost in New Rochelle. The City Council voted 4-3 Tuesday night not to change its the city’s code to allow backyard chickens.
Several local residents had requested the change, hoping they’d be be able to raise chickens, for their eggs, mostly, in coops in their back yards. Here’s our original story on the issue.
In the end, council members’ concerns about complaints and cleanliness won out. A full story is in the works; we’ll have it on LoHud.com soon and in the pages of the Journal News, too.
4 Comments
Thank God sanity (and sanitation) prevailed overwhelmingly, by a vote of 4-3.
That’s a shame. Just like any other pet – if kept correctly they pose no danger, health risk or mess. They make less mess and less noise than a dog. Dogs don’t provide food or eat ticks, japanese beetles, grubs, nor do they provide organic fertilizer.
What a mistake. It is a shame.
The Nays didn’t really give a very good excuse when they voted. Personal biases and a lack of understanding killed this one. I mean really—Hayden didn’t like chickens as a kid? That’s how we decide these things? Neighbors wouldn’t hear or smell anything at all if they’re kept right. If they aren’t kept right, the city has the power to do something about it. Sheesh. Don’t we have the right to control our own food sources?
Meanwhile: “The U.S. government is attempting to cut the jobs of 1,000 poultry inspectors to save $85 million per year. The new plan is to have the poultry industry “self inspect” themselves (after all, the same concept worked well with Wall Street, right?). One poultry industry inspector will now be responsible for “inspecting” the dizzying number of 175 chickens per minute. So unless a bird is keeled over dead, it will be pretty tough to spot any discrepancies. Especially when the inspector’s paycheck comes not from Uncle Sam, but from the same company that is pumping the steroids, hormones, antibiotics, and growth stimulants into these birds to squeeze out every penny of profit from their sick business of raising tortured/poisoned animals on an industrial scale for meat and egg production.”
Read it and weep: http://chelseagreen.com/blogs/rjruppenthal/2012/04/20/some-sick-chickens-and-eggs-in-your-food-supply/.