Two weeks ago, I wrote about bringing backyard chickens back to Rhode Island and paid special attention to the ongoing effort to repeal Woonsocket’s chicken ban. A few days later, the Washington Post ran a feature-length article on low-income Woonsocket residents’ struggles to feed their families.

My last post focused on the ways that historical justifications for chicken bans have become outdated, and also noted some health and environmental benefits of backyard chickens. The Post article casts the Woonsocket chicken issue in a new light: Woonsocket suffers from food insecurity, and backyard chickens can help.

The Post article is worth your time to read (here’s another link to it), but here are a few important takeaways: Every month, the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) injects $2 million in benefits (formerly called food stamps) into the Woonsocket economy. With a local unemployment rate of 12% and only low-paying jobs available to many employed residents, a full one-third of Woonsocket residents receive SNAP benefits. In fact, some local grocery stores make up to 25% of their monthly profits on the first of the month, the day when SNAP benefits are transferred to recipients. Together, these numbers – and the article’s well-drawn profiles of several Woonsocket residents – present a picture of food insecurity.

Backyard chickens are not a panacea by any means, but they can help to alleviate food insecurity and promote economic self-reliance. They can turn food scraps, beetles, and grubs into fresh eggs. And their droppings (if dealt with appropriately) are great for growing vegetables too. They add resilience to a broken food system. You can read more about chickens and chicken care by poking around Southside Community Land Trust’s website.

Once you’re satisfied that backyard chickens make sense, you should come out to Woonsocket City Hall on Monday, April 1 at 7 p.m. to show your support for repealing Woonsocket’s chicken ban!

A genuine Rhode Island chicken. Image courtesy of eschipul @ flickr.

All over Rhode Island, people want to keep backyard chickens. The trouble is that the law often doesn’t let them.

Until 2010, Providence banned chicken-keeping entirely. That year, a coalition of residents worked together to overturn the ban. These efforts paid off – now, chickens peck away happily at sites ranging from Southside Community Land Trust’s almost-a-whole-block City Farm to my friends’ snug 1700-square-foot lot in the West End.

After this success in Providence, other cities and towns looked more closely at allowing chickens. Swanky Barrington followed Providence. The City Council in Cranston, where I live, repealed the city’s chicken ban; unfortunately, though, our mayor vetoed the repeal so the ban remains on the books (for now). As spring approaches and our thoughts turn to our backyards, a city and town in northern Rhode Island – Woonsocket and North Smithfield – are considering lifting their backyard chicken bans.

The effort to repeal the Woonsocket ban began the same way most repeal campaigns seem to: a Woonsocket zoning officer ordered a responsible chicken owner to get rid of his birds. Alex Kithes says his neighbors didn’t even realize he had chickens until he offered to share some eggs. As word spread, the city found out and issued a citation. Alex is fighting back. He has drafted a city council member to introduce a bill allowing chickens in Woonsocket, and he is lining up individuals and organizations to lend support.

CLF supports eliminating barriers to local food, and that includes legalizing backyard chickens in Woonsocket. When people keep chickens, they can cheaply opt out of industrial egg-suppliers.  A more direct benefit of backyard chickens is that small broods’ droppings make great fertilizer, while concentrated droppings from large egg-laying operations are toxic. Backyard chickens also add resiliency to our increasingly concentrated food system. And backyard chickens can even encourage organic waste diversion, eating table scraps that otherwise might be landfilled. These are the types of broad-ranging benefits that panelists recently promoted at the Rhode Island Local Food Forum.

Legalizing backyard chickens also allows residents full use of their property to grow food and helps to foster community. To better understand these points, we have to take a brief look back in history. Municipal bans on backyard chickens began with New York City in 1877, followed by Boston in 1896. Both cities were motivated primarily by concerns with unsanitary chicken slaughter; wholesale bans on chickens, however, were much easier to enforce than targeted bans on slaughter.

Over time, however, slaughter of backyard chickens has all but vanished (and is still banned in most modern chicken ordinances, though off-site processors may be available for those who want to eat their birds and not just their eggs). Sanitary concerns have largely disappeared (and sanitation is regulated in most modern chicken ordinances). And chicken bans remain on the books primarily due to worries about nuisance and image. But any well-tailored chicken ordinance will take a dual approach to nuisance: both proactive (setting minimum conditions for housing and feeding chickens, and banning noisy roosters) and reactive (allowing neighbors or municipalities to fight actual nuisance conditions). This approach allows people to keep clean, quiet birds on their property if they choose to do so.

And clean, quiet birds not only are perfectly consistent with a positive community image but can in fact foster community. Backyard chickens can be quite stylish (this coop, for example, looks even better in person!) or even all but invisible – I didn’t realize my West End friends had chickens until they paused our daughters’ play date to go outside and feed the birds. Chickens tend to be great with children, and egg-sharing can bring neighbors together. Finally, there are no known data suggesting that backyard chickens negatively affect nearby property values. The fact is that out-and-out chicken bans restrict property rights and prevent environmental benefits for no good reason at all. Everybody loses.

For all these reasons, CLF supports amending the Woonsocket backyard chicken ban. I plan to speak in favor of repealing the ban at Woonsocket’s April 1 City Council meeting, and I hope you will consider joining the growing pro-chicken coalition as well.

• Monday, March 19 – “Eating with the Ecosystem” – A new venture in Rhode Island takes a holistic view of local seafood and aims to encourage us to eat a diverse array of species, rather than depleting our marine resources by consuming the same few fish. Read this blog post to learn more about Eating with the Ecosystem and how you can enjoy it at a participating restaurant.
• Wednesday, March 21 – “Recap and Roundup of News on Today’s Fishermen Rally” – This week, fishing groups held a rally in Washington, D.C. to voice to lawmakers their support for bills that would eliminate significant conservation measures from the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the 36-year old law that governs the management of our nation’s fisheries and has helped bring severely depleted fish populations back from the brink of collapse. TalkingFish.org compiled a list of interesting opinion-based coverage of the rally and the forces behind it.
• Friday, March 23 – “Fish Talk in the News – Friday, March 23″ – Interesting stories from around the web this week: what river herring are and why they’re important; what to expect from the show “Wicked Tuna”; and a video and recipes to help you make sushi at home.

If you read the CLF Scoop, you probably already know how important it is to make sure that the seafood you purchase is from a healthy fishery and was caught in a sustainable manner. But did you know that it’s now easier than ever to buy this sustainable fish at your local supermarket along with your regular grocery shopping?

Earlier this month, Shaw’s Supermarkets announced that it would be working with the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) to develop a new sustainable seafood sourcing program. Seafood products certified by the MSC will include various wild salmons and other Alaskan, Pacific, and Canadian fish. The MSC is a well-known sustainable seafood certification and ecolabelling program that certifies fisheries across the globe – you’ve probably seen their logo on seafood in stores or read about them in the news. MSC certification is not a perfect process but it is more reliable than no MSC certification.

Look for this seal in supermarkets to be sure that your seafood has been certified by the GMRI Responsibly Harvested branding program

If you want an even better certification for New Englanders, look for the GMRI label. GMRI is a regional nonprofit organization that uses science, education, and community to catalyze solutions to the complex challenges of ocean stewardship and economic growth in the Gulf of Maine bioregion.  Their Gulf of Maine Responsibly Harvested branding program identifies locally caught products that have met their rigorous criteria for responsible harvest. The GMRI-certified seafood products that Shaws will be selling include lobster, northern shrimp, cod, haddock, sea scallops and pollock, and GMRI is working with other supermarkets, including Hannaford, as well as with restaurants in Portland, Maine. This brand is a two-fer: GMRI fish has the benefits of responsible harvest methods coupled with lower transportation costs, which help with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

This is great news for those of us who care about eating responsibly harvested seafood and about supporting our local fishermen and coastal economies – and of course it’s great news for New England’s fishermen, economies, and environment as well. Seafood traceability – being able to follow your fish along the supply chain from the fisherman who caught it to the place where you purchased it – is essential to ensure that the responsibly harvested fish we buy and eat is in fact harvested responsibly. Seafood certification programs such as those discussed above are a way for consumers to have more confidence in the sustainability of their food sources, and we commend retailers, restaurants, and the nonprofits with which they partner for making certified products available for shoppers and diners.

Consumers who are ready to take the traceability of their seafood to the next level should check out local community supported fisheries (CSFs), in which CSF members pay fishermen in advance of the season and then receive a weekly share of seafood throughout the season, and websites like sea2table.com and traceandtrust.com that allow consumers to find local restaurants serving fresh-caught seafood or to trace their purchased fish straight back to the boat and fisherman who caught it.

To read more about buying sustainable seafood and supporting your local fishermen, visit CLF’s blog about fishery management in New England, www.talkingfish.org.