The Great Chicken Debate has come to roost in another local jurisdiction. And it’s a good opportunity to discuss government and its citizenry and how each interact with the other.
The Tribune-Review reports that a petition is circulating in New Kensington to allow chickens to be kept in the Westmoreland County city. It supposedly was prompted by a complaint about the proclivity of one chicken keeper’s fowl to roam. The owner says the chickens have become more neighborhood pets than any kind of nuisance.
A growing number of local jurisdictions have adopted ordinances expressly allowing for the keeping of chickens. Among them, the City of Pittsburgh (with an onerous $70 permitting fee that originally, and amazingly, was nearly five times that amount).
But the latest iteration of this debate—a chicken dance, if you will—can serve as an object lesson in a number of ways for the public and public policy makers alike. To wit:
A code enforcement officer says the illegal New Ken chickens would not have come to light had the owner better managed them. The implication is that, even with a law on the books prohibiting the keeping of certain “farm animals” in New Kensington, had the owner been more responsible, government would have been more tolerant.
But what right does government have to lord over what some claim is their right to feed themselves? Well, rights do come with concomitant responsibilities; government does have an obligation to ensure that the rights of others are not precluded.
Just as important, however, citizens have a right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Which is exactly what not only the offended party did but also what the New Kensington chicken owner has done.
That, in turn, has prompted New Kensington leaders to consider changing the city’s ordinance to allow chickens (replete, one can only assume, with rules and regulations that keepers hope won’t be too restrictive as to make keeping chickens a virtual impossibility).
That said, are chickens only “farm animals”? Not exclusively. People have been keeping chickens in more urban areas for a very long time. And in modern times, the practice appears to be growing.
Some view it as a way to be more independent of a food chain they might not trust. Others see it as a way to be better prepared for some emergency. Some do it for fun.
Still others contend it saves them money (though the economics of chicken-keeping do not always support that premise). And, as previously noted, others claim the right to keep chickens is as fundamental as the right to feed oneself.
At one time or another, we all like to rail about government. And though we feel that government in too many cases has become an unrepentant Leviathan—and indeed it has—we often forget that we are government and that we have the ability and responsibility to change it for the better.
It appears that at least one New Kensington resident is attempting to do just that. And it also appears that New Kensington government is attempting to respond. And that’s government, it and we, functioning as it was intended.
