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Opinion

Council Should Say YES to Easing Restrictions on Keeping Goats, Chickens & Bees, Because it is the Right Thing To Do

by Donna Marykwas *
Dr. Marykwas is the founder and director of Long Beach Grows, advocating for a just and equitable food system that includes food security through urban agriculture, including small scale animal husbandry. She is a Ph.D. educator and scientist with a degree in Biochemistry, Molecular & Cell Biology from Cornell University (research focused on the Molecular Microbiology of bacteria and yeast.) She was a university professor of Microbiology for over 12 years.



(July 16, 2013) -- Long Beach Grows supports the proposal that is before City Council this evening, the result of over 3 years of research and discussion with the City. Our petition to relax the rules regarding small scale animal husbandry in Long Beach has over 1,800 signatures.

There is strong public support for this proposal throughout the city. There were public meetings organized by the Office of Sustainability, at which there was overwhelming support for the chickens, goats and bees with proposed rules even more lenient than the current proposal. Several informal polls, including one distributed by Councilperson Gerrie Schipske, showed overwhelming support, with those in favor outnumbering opponents 2 to 1. The request to ease the restrictions on small scale animal agriculture first came before the Sustainable City Commission in 2010, where it received unanimous support. It has been discussed at almost every meeting of the Environmental Committee since then. There has been ample opportunity for the public to discuss this issue. The public has spoken, and it wants this.

These animals are pets like dogs and cats, but in addition to providing companionship and entertainment, they allow people to raise their own eggs, milk, and honey from animals that have been treated with the utmost love, care, and respect. We know our animals have not been poisoned with growth hormones and other chemicals. We know they are allowed to see the light of day, to stretch their wings, to take dust baths, to scratch for their favorite foods (grubs, etc.), and to sleep at night because we don’t force them to live with artificial lights on.

We know the goats are happy, healthy, and not treated with hormones and antibiotics that we don’t want in the milk. We know the bees are well cared for and are ensuring the future of the world’s pollinators. Anybody who truly cares about the welfare of animals should support this proposal.

Chickens and goats provide countless hours of family-friendly entertainment and education. Please view this video (at this YouTube link.) The girl in the video lives in San Pedro, she has raised goats in Long Beach and San Pedro, and she is one of the foster moms who has taken care of our goats. Valerie says, "Raising the animals and raising the food does give you an understanding of life you wouldn’t have otherwise. It has given me a greater respect and having that, it enhances my life to have that consideration of other things...." This is just one of the many advantages that urban agriculture offers to our residents, in addition to food independence and food security, important educational lessons about respecting, loving, and caring for other creatures. She gets it, and she is only a teenager.

These animals feed, entertain, and educate us, they also provide fertilizer, can actively compost waste, eat harmful bugs and rodents, etc.

More people & more cultures throughout the world drink goat milk, not cow milk. Goat milk is more nutritious and less allergenic. Homegrown, free range, organic eggs are nutritionally superior to conventional supermarket eggs.

Goats and Hens are Not Noisy. Hens at their loudest are quieter than car traffic, a lawnmower, a barking dog, a baby crying, and a parrot squawking. Goats are even quieter than hens.

Goats and Chickens Don't Stink. People are prejudiced against the idea of having chickens and goats without having any experience. All animals poop. If people can be entrusted to clean up after their 4 great danes, then people should be entrusted to manage their own chickens’ and goats’ manure. A typical dog (i.e. not a great dane) generates 3/4 lb of manure per day. A typical hen produces 0.0035 cu ft of manure per day.

Even The Wall Street Journal, a traditionally conservative publication, reported that "Chickens suffer from a PR problem. People think they are dirty, noisy, & smelly. The truth, cared for hens are cleaner & quieter than one big dog or the 3 neighborhood cats that poop in the flower bed. Plus you get eggs..."

  • There is a Misperceived Public Health Risk. Raising poultry and small livestock will not create a health hazard. The hazards to our health are due to large scale agribusiness practices that are cruel to our animals, introduce harmful substances such as antibiotics, hormones, & pesticides into our food supply, and are perfect breeding grounds for sick animals. Urban agriculture is the solution, not the problem.

    The CDC does not recognize poultry or goats as serious health threats, although it acknowledges that cats and dogs can transmit rabies (both), cat scratch fever, toxoplasmosis, ringworm, giardiasis, lyme disease, rocky mountain spotted fever, flea-borne typhus, and more.

    Phyllis Shulman, the Legislative Assistant to Seattle Councilman Richard Conlin said that comparing goats to dogs and cats their "health issues are way less than cat feces or dog issues, but it is important to keep perspective. For example, cat feces is a major polluter of our urban streams. Dogs attack people and often bark all night." She has also assured us that the impact on animal control enforcement and land use code enforcement have been "miniscule."

    Agriculture, including livestock farming, was the foundation of Long Beach’s history and early economy. During World War I and World War II, the US government considered victory gardens a form of patriotism and call to service, and these gardens, tended mostly by women and children, indeed provided most of the food that fed our nation while the enlisted farmers were off defending our freedoms.

    The current rural/urban divide threatens food security. The year 1955 was the last time LA county, once the most productive agricultural county in the country, could feed itself. Now most people living in "the city" are disconnected from the source of their nourishment.

    A recent study conducted by Professor and scientist Parwinder Grewal of Ohio State University reports that U.S. cities can grow much of their food, as much as 100% of the fresh produce needed to be self-reliant, 94% of the eggs, and 100% of the honey.

    Other cities that have embraced a return to urban agriculture are of similar and even greater population density, including San Francisco, San Diego, and Seattle. We really have no excuse and owe it to the future of our children to advocate for a just and equitable food system by promoting food security through urban agriculture.

    The Long Beach City Council should vote to support the proposal easing restrictions on goats, chickens, and bees. It is the right thing to do.

    Ms. Marykwas has also commended comments by Barbara Sinclair on the Wrigley Neighborhood Group's Facebook page, responding to an LBREPORT.com-published op-ed opposed to the ordinance. Ms. Sinclair is VP of the Long Beach Beekeepers and a member of BASC (Beekeepers Association of So.Cal) and Backwards Beekeepers in L.A. Her comments are in a .docx file at at this link


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