Keeping Vancouver Safe: Controlling Chickens in the City of Vancouver
Kerry Jang - April 15, 2010
The City of Vancouver recently approved new guidelines for allowing homeowners to keep up to four backyard hens. Many people are beginning to keep backyard hens to grow their own eggs, and it is becoming increasingly popular to do so. Victoria, Burnaby and Richmond allow it, as well as cities like Seattle, Chicago, and New York.
We know that there are people in Vancouver who are already keeping backyard hens illegally. That’s why it was important that Council set guidelines, so that homeowners have rules and regulations to follow.
Vancouver’s backyard chicken laws are designed to prevent the outbreak of disease, pests, filth and noise. Unlike Burnaby and Richmond, the new Vancouver chicken law allows a maximum of four hens, no roosters, and prohibits the sale of the eggs and meat.
These new laws also set clear regulations on keeping the chicken coops clean and how the chicken feed is kept so that they do not attract pests like raccoons. A final important element of the new law is that anyone keeping chickens must be registered with the city so that they can be inspected.
If the City of Vancouver did not pass these laws, our city would be at increased health risk. In fact, the Provincial health authority - who helped the City write these laws -concluded that when chickens are kept according to the new guidelines, the risk to health and safety is less than that of owning a dog!
Cities like New York and Seattle that allow backyard chickens have had few problems. Like Vancouver, these cities had to put laws in place because chickens were already being raised without any controls. Putting these regulations in place is the responsible thing to do.
We are all concerned about food quality and these new laws represent the best practice for raising a small number of chickens. Raising chickens in the city is no different from having a garden to grow vegetables for your own table. What is forgotten by city-dwellers is where food comes from and a healthy city is one where its citizens know that vegetables or chicken are actually raised – and don’t just come from wrapped packages at the grocery store!