Poultry slaughtering near residences approved

Thursday, July 3, 2003 | 11:24 a.m.

As a boy, Las Vegas City Councilman Gary Reese routinely chopped the heads off chickens before going to church so that his mother could prepare a Sunday dinner of what he called the best fried chicken he ever tasted.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said he also has a childhood memory of walking into his neighborhood butcher shop and watching chickens run free across the floor only to be grabbed by the butcher to have their throats slit. He also recalled that discarded chicken parts in garbage cans outside the shop created a foul odor throughout the neighborhood.

Reese and Goodman on Wednesday joined the other five council members in unanimously approving a proposed ordinance that allows the slaughtering and processing of poultry in commercially zoned areas adjacent to residential neighborhoods. That practice was limited to the city's industrial areas before Wednesday's vote.

The measure requires businesses to come before the Planning Commission and the City Council to get a special use permit first.

About 100 people attended the council meeting to hear debate on the item, which was emotional. Most were Hispanics whose custom is to eat freshly killed chickens, and they wanted local grocery stores to be allowed to sell them.

Opponents such as Beth James of the Las Vegas Avicultural Society feared that the importing of chickens into the area would spark another outbreak of Exotic Newcastle Disease, which earlier this year led to the federal government confiscating and destroying thousands of local birds, many of them pets.

"I have grave concerns about this chicken processing because of disease," she said, noting that a quarantine on moving birds between California and Nevada still exists. She owns five parrots that cost her thousands of dollars, she said.

A promise by Clark County Health District to monitor chicken slaughtering operations, with the help of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and state inspectors, won over the council.

No California chickens will be transported into Nevada until the quarantine is lifted, health district officials said. They added the facilities would be sterile and enclosed within a store and that no chicken waste would be permitted in trash bins outside the business.

Councilman Michael Mack said that with the Health District's support, he had "comfort to move forward."

A growing city like Las Vegas has to be ready to meet the needs of diverse cultures, he said, noting chicken slaughtering operations are common in stores in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, where there are significant Hispanic populations.

"It's part of a culture," Mack said.

Hispanics believe freshly killed chickens are "more healthy (because) they are not injected" with preservatives, Jennifer Angel, who represents the Central America Coalition for Nevada, said.

However, another opponent of the measure told the council that hormone-free, fresh packaged chicken is already available at many Las Vegas grocery stores.

Other restrictions approved Wednesday limit delivery and pickup times between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., require chickens to be kept in a contained area, limit the number of birds at a site to 50 per day, limit the slaughtering operation to 525 square feet and require all birds alive at 4 p.m. to be slaughtered and packaged.

The bill stems from a request in January to the Planning Commission by the Liborio Market, 930 N. Lamb Blvd., which wants to install a slaughter and processing center on site.

Initially the market sought to amend the general plan to rezone the area to industrial. Instead, the Planning Commission opted to support a measure to allow the slaughter and processing of live poultry throughout the city -- the bill that was approved Wednesday.

John Alejo, one of the owners of Liborio Market, told the council that freshly killed chickens cost about 25 percent more than packaged chicken, which translates to about 50 cents more per bird.