Richmond, CA City Council Bans Live Chicken Sales!

“Councilmember Jeff Ritterman did a celebratory chair-spin and fist-pump!”

For two years, the San Francisco activist group LGBT Compassion led a vigorous campaign to ban live poultry sales in the city’s Civic Center Farmers Market. On May 27, 2011, they won! The group next turned its attention to the Richmond, CA farmers market, the last known Bay Area farmers market to continue selling live birds. Joined by In Defense of Animals, the activists have been holding weekly protest demonstrations and documenting the horrific cruelty to which chickens are subjected by the vendors, who stuff them crying into grocery bags for customers to purchase, take away, torture and kill as they please.

Blitzed with complaints, the Richmond City Council held a meeting on Sept. 27 to decide the future of chicken sales in Richmond. There IS NO FUTURE! The City Council voted to ban live chicken sales effective November 1, 2011. The city attorney agreed with LGBT Compassion’s position that a new California law, effective January 1, 2012, prohibiting live animal sales in public places, does not exclude poultry. This will allow California activists to attack live poultry markets elsewhere in the state.

The city council meeting was a great success, said Andrew Zollman of LGBT Compassion and Hope Bohanec of IDA. 19 activists attended the meeting and made public statements supporting the ban on live poultry sales in Richmond.

United Poultry Concerns has actively supported LGBT Compassion’s campaign from the beginning, reporting regularly on it in Poultry Press and over the Internet. UPC Vice President, Liqin Cao, translated the campaign’s handout brochure “What’s wrong with live chickens at farmers markets?” into Chinese. For more information, go to www.upc-online.org/livemarkets on our Website.