Ethics Trading

But only if you live in Mouscron in Belgium….

Residents of a Belgian town are to be offered chickens as part of a campaign to reduce household waste.

The town of Mouscron has 50 pairs of chickens that it will distribute to families with sufficient space to keep the birds in their gardens.

What a splendid idea! But how does that fit with EU regulations that you shouldn’t feed kitchen or household waste to chickens?

These are three of my chickens, well, two are mine and one belongs to a friend and is on holiday here – but we do love our hens. They are very efficient consumers of weeds, grass clippings, dried sunflower heads, plant prunings and pretty much anything remotely edible you care to pop into the pen – including slugs and snails and you should see them catching flies!

Mine don’t have the run of the garden, I’m not allowed due to local council guidelines so do check your house deeds or rent agreement before you get any chickens of your own, and do check with your neighbours as well.

But EU regs. According to the EU those lovely chickens shouldn’t really be eating my veg peelings, left over pasta, half spoon of mashed potato and bits of pizza crust. But what else should I do with it? The peelings can go in the compost and we do try to not waste food but now and then there is some waste. At the moment my daughter has a flu like cold and her appetite is up and down like a yoyo and she’ll think she’s hungry and then get part way through her dinner and start feeling ill again and leave some. So, landfill or chickens?

The EU regs were put in place to stop the big farms from feeding their chickens on inappropriate things and thus preventing the possibility of a disaster like mad cow disease.  But it’s worded in such a way that it *could* apply to those of us who have a few hens for a few eggs each week and for fun. I’m not selling my eggs or eating my chickens, I don’t see why they shouldn’t peck over the kitchen waste as long as I’m balancing that with a complete food that provides a balanced diet for them. It certainly means less waste in our bin and more good quality fertiliser for my garden.

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