By Diana Nelson Jones
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
February 08, 2010

Proposed changes to the city ordinance dealing with the keeping of agricultural animals on city properties has agitated bee and chicken keepers.

Burgh Bees, a 375-member nonprofit, has put out a “call to action” via e-mail for attendance at a public hearing before the city planning commission at 2 p.m. Feb. 16 “to show how many beekeepers and beekeeper supporters there are” in the city. The hearing is at 200 Ross St., Downtown.

Legal wording currently is confusing and leaves room for abuse of privilege, city officials have said. But bee and chicken raisers say the proposed changes could create unintended ill-effects.

The hearing is the public’s chance to offer input, said Joanna Doven, spokeswoman for Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.

“We support urban farms and groups like Burgh Bees,” she said, “but we have to make sure we are balancing their interests with the safety needs and concerns of other residents.

“There has been a disconnect between what is and isn’t allowed, so we need an ordinance that clearly outlines how we should proceed.”

Under current law, residents must get a variance to raise chickens on properties of less than 5 acres or if their lots don’t allow 200 feet between the coop and a property line, but it’s vague as to whether a five-animal limit means pets are included. In addition, enforcement is driven by complaints.

A proposed 15-foot setback from any property line and 2,500-square-foot minimum per hive would in effect ban beekeeping in many of the city’s dense neighborhoods, “where our members have been safely keeping bees for years,” said Meredith Grelli, founder and director of Burgh Bees.

Furthermore, she said, people’s efforts to comply with the 15-foot setback, especially in dense areas, could lead to bad beekeeping.

See the rest of the article here.

Burgh Bees website here.

Pittsburgh officials may rein in urban agriculture – Pittsburgh Tribune Review, March 1, 2010

Thirty years ago, the headline in the first issue of ‘City Farmer’ (our newspaper) was ‘Chickens in Soup’, a story about a Vancouver woman who was in trouble with municipal authorities for keeping chickens in her back yard. Recently the subject has popped up multiple times across North America.

Just before Christmas, Canada’s ‘As it Happens’ a national radio show, interviewed an Ann Arbor, Michigan Council Member who was championing the right of city residents to keep chickens.

Last week I received a call from CBC TV in Halifax asking me what I thought about a woman in that Atlantic city who had to send her urban chickens away to a farm in the country. Yesterday, a journalist in New Westminster, BC called wanting me to comment on a fellow in that city in trouble because of his fowl flock.

Once again the ‘country’ is trying to make inroads in the city but without success.

Below are links to articles which I’m finding almost weekly.

Poultry in motion: Chickens adopting urban lifestyle. You can raise them in New York but not here. Toronto locavores are hoping to change that
May 04, 2008 Toronto Star

Halifax family runs afoul of poultry police “Blecha surveyed 21 cities in Canada and found that only four allowed chickens: Brampton and London in Ontario, and Surrey and Victoria in British Columbia. In contrast, the U.S. allows chickens in 53 cities.”

A chicken & egg argument:
A suburban Halifax family fined $500 and ordered to get rid of their 13 pet chickens says HRM is making much a-cock-a-doodle-do about nothing

Urban agriculture big news in zero-mile-diet world

The New Westminster article here: ‘Playing chicken with the city’.

The Halifax article here: ‘Neighbour balks at backyard chickens’.

The Ann Arbor article here: ‘Chickens in Ann Arbor backyards?’.

City Farmer’s article from 1978 here: ‘Chickens in Soup’.

Read about ‘City Chickens 101′, a class in Seattle, Washington. “You will leave this class with everything you need to know to start raising chickens in your own backyard.”

And even in Powassan, Ontario, a rural town of maybe 1000
people, farm animals are not wanted. Read: ‘Zoning proposal likely to raise feathers’.

Backyard Chickens I (Farming in the City III)
Meet Bucky Buckaw – a backyard-chicken expert and Host of Bucky Buckaw’s Backyard Chicken Broadcast. Also meet Christoph Martens – a subversive backyard chickener who raises chickens within the city limits of Nelson, British Columbia. While City Bylaw #2333 prohibits the raising of poultry, Martens won’t let such an environmentally irresponsible bylaw get in the way of his path to greater self-sufficiency.

Hatching Plans for Urban Egg Producers