Chickens in Moab City letter
1 view
Skip to first unread message
Lance Christie
Jan 4, 2009, 3:46:25 PM1/4/09
to canyonlands...@googlegroups.com
January 4, 2009
TO: Moab City Planning and Zoning Commission
FROM: Richard Lance Christie, Coordinator for Canyonlands Sustainable Solutions, a member of the Relocalizaton Network
RE: Allowing poultry within the Moab City limits through change in the Land Use Code
Canyonlands Sustainable Solutions is the name of the local franchise of the international Relocalization Network, in which some 270 communities in 12 nations are participating. All the communities are working on developing regional capacities to provide food, energy, and other necessities for local consumption. Although many of us foresee that "making other arrangements" for supplying local needs will be necessitated by rising fuel prices and thus increasing unfeasibility of long-distance shipping of goods, the financial analyses of the Sonoran Institute, the Urban Institute, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and others all show that local production of goods and services for local consumption creates a powerful "wealth effect" which is a most effective form of "economic development" benefiting local economies. A dollar spent to purchase an imported good leaves the community immediately. The same dollar spent on a locally-produced good changes hands in the community some seven to nine times before leaving the community, thus creating the "wealth effect" in question.
In other words, we should be developing local production capacity for food, energy, transportation, and other supplies out of pure economic self-interest. Developing local production capacity also creates community resilience and thus enhances community security. Moab sits at the end of a very long supply chain which is going to become increasingly vulnerable to disruptions and price shocks as the cost of energy and other natural resources becomes higher and less stable due to increasing demand competing for diminishing production capacity around the globe. It behooves us to do what we should be doing on economic development grounds anyway to insure us against vulnerability to supply chain shock events.
The food working group of Canyonlands Sustainable Solutions has been holding food growing, harvesting and processing workshops this last year. I have made presentations to the Post Carbon Salt Lake group which is also a member of the Relocalization Network, and in the process have been introduced to how Salt Lake City regulations allow for the keeping of chickens by residents of the city. Chickens are one of the most efficient converters of plant material and insects to animal protein for human consumption in the form of their eggs, and all urban food production systems include chickens as part of those systems.
In the January/February 2009 Worldwatch: "An 'urban chicken' movement has swept across the United States in recent years. Cities such as Anne Arbor, Michigan; Fort Collins, Colorado; and South Portland, Maine, have all voted in the past year to allow residents to raise backyard poultry." The article says the trend started in London, England; Seattle, WA and Portland OR followed, according to the Urban Agriculture Network. Within the past five years, the urban chicken movement has expanded to Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Fransisco.
Some health officials have worried that allowing backyard chickens elevates avian flu pandemic risks. In fact, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production's worldwide study found that all the outbreaks of avian flu to date originated in confined poultry feeding operations, not among small numbers of chickens kept by families in neighborhoods. Avian flu originating in the "sink" of a confined poultry "industrial farming" operation can spread to backyard flocks nearby, but Grand County does not have a confined poultry operation in which an avian flu outbreak could originate.
Several local food activists have collected information on the regulations successfully used to govern city chicken flocks elsewhere. I urge you to adopt such regulations which prevent nuisance from the keeping of urban chickens, and adopt regulations allowing chicken-keeping in the city with sensible, proven provisions for flock size, sanitation, noise abatement, setbacks, and such to prevent the chicken-keeper being an undue nuisance to his or her neighbors.
TO: Moab City Planning and Zoning Commission
FROM: Richard Lance Christie, Coordinator for Canyonlands Sustainable Solutions, a member of the Relocalizaton Network
RE: Allowing poultry within the Moab City limits through change in the Land Use Code
Canyonlands Sustainable Solutions is the name of the local franchise of the international Relocalization Network, in which some 270 communities in 12 nations are participating. All the communities are working on developing regional capacities to provide food, energy, and other necessities for local consumption. Although many of us foresee that "making other arrangements" for supplying local needs will be necessitated by rising fuel prices and thus increasing unfeasibility of long-distance shipping of goods, the financial analyses of the Sonoran Institute, the Urban Institute, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and others all show that local production of goods and services for local consumption creates a powerful "wealth effect" which is a most effective form of "economic development" benefiting local economies. A dollar spent to purchase an imported good leaves the community immediately. The same dollar spent on a locally-produced good changes hands in the community some seven to nine times before leaving the community, thus creating the "wealth effect" in question.
In other words, we should be developing local production capacity for food, energy, transportation, and other supplies out of pure economic self-interest. Developing local production capacity also creates community resilience and thus enhances community security. Moab sits at the end of a very long supply chain which is going to become increasingly vulnerable to disruptions and price shocks as the cost of energy and other natural resources becomes higher and less stable due to increasing demand competing for diminishing production capacity around the globe. It behooves us to do what we should be doing on economic development grounds anyway to insure us against vulnerability to supply chain shock events.
The food working group of Canyonlands Sustainable Solutions has been holding food growing, harvesting and processing workshops this last year. I have made presentations to the Post Carbon Salt Lake group which is also a member of the Relocalization Network, and in the process have been introduced to how Salt Lake City regulations allow for the keeping of chickens by residents of the city. Chickens are one of the most efficient converters of plant material and insects to animal protein for human consumption in the form of their eggs, and all urban food production systems include chickens as part of those systems.
In the January/February 2009 Worldwatch: "An 'urban chicken' movement has swept across the United States in recent years. Cities such as Anne Arbor, Michigan; Fort Collins, Colorado; and South Portland, Maine, have all voted in the past year to allow residents to raise backyard poultry." The article says the trend started in London, England; Seattle, WA and Portland OR followed, according to the Urban Agriculture Network. Within the past five years, the urban chicken movement has expanded to Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Fransisco.
Some health officials have worried that allowing backyard chickens elevates avian flu pandemic risks. In fact, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production's worldwide study found that all the outbreaks of avian flu to date originated in confined poultry feeding operations, not among small numbers of chickens kept by families in neighborhoods. Avian flu originating in the "sink" of a confined poultry "industrial farming" operation can spread to backyard flocks nearby, but Grand County does not have a confined poultry operation in which an avian flu outbreak could originate.
Several local food activists have collected information on the regulations successfully used to govern city chicken flocks elsewhere. I urge you to adopt such regulations which prevent nuisance from the keeping of urban chickens, and adopt regulations allowing chicken-keeping in the city with sensible, proven provisions for flock size, sanitation, noise abatement, setbacks, and such to prevent the chicken-keeper being an undue nuisance to his or her neighbors.
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages