Outsource Oakland Animal Services?

At last Thursday's City Council meeting, Ignacio De La Fuente asked Chief Batts if the City of Oakland should turn over the Oakland Animal Shelter to the SPCA or to Alameda County. The Chief indicated that OPD has discussed options for outsourcing as De La Fuente suggested.

Council Member De La Fuente asked Chief Batts, "Have we explored, really, transferring that animal shelter to the SPCA, the County, some other agency that can deal with the animal shelter?" The Chief responds, "We have, we are currently exploring different things to do with the animal shelter. I do have to applaud my staff who works out there who does an outstanding job but we are looking at ways to maximize that org to utilize it or even to adress that situation like you were saying."

Here's how it went down:

Ignacio...



The Chief responds....


I'm not exactly sure what this means? If we don't have any money in the budget for OAS now, how could we possible provide enough resources to the SPCA to operate a legitimate shelter? And who would handle animal control and enforcement? The City is considering allowing backyard livestock but wouldn't have anyone around to enforce whatever restrictions were in place? Sounds like a tea party slaughterhouse operators dream scenario.

I'm curious if anyone has a good idea of what this outsourcing proposal would look like in reality? On the surface it seems a bit sketchy and would, once again, leave Oakland animals to suffer.

Advocating for Backyard Slaughterhouses in Oakland?

Turns out there was a big kerfuffle a few weeks back out at a garden in West Oakland. The urban gardener was hit up by the city for zoning violations and the normally peaceful urban garden world was in an uproar! So I decided to poke around and see what all the fuss was about.

What's not to like about urban gardening? Who could possibly be against food security and food justice? Why waste valuable city resources enforcing phased out zoning violations on "punk" urban farmers growing chard? All good questions.

In my research I learned about something called the Oakland Food Policy Council. It's an organization established to "promote an equitable and sustainable Oakland food system". Some really great stuff there and some really well researched positions on urban agriculture in Oakland. One paragraph in one of the items, OFPC's Statement on Urban Agriculture caught my eye and it may be a bit challenging to get behind:

“In addition to the priority policy recommendations above, there are several other areas where updated policies could benefit Oakland’s urban farmers and gardeners, including raising animals and livestock. For example, Seattle’s new urban agriculture zoning increased the number of chickens permitted per household and added other allowed animals, including potbelly pigs. The OFPC also strongly supports the integration of animals into urban food production systems because they provide products that can improve the diets of Oakland’s residents (e.g. fresh milk, honey, eggs, and meat). Some urban farmers collect wool and goat hair for cottage industries. Finally, manure is an important fertilizer source for sustainable, ecological food production that is not reliant on petroleum-based chemical fertilizers.”

"Integration of animals into urban food production systems"? Does that mean backyard slaughterhouses? Because those might (under some strange logic) "benefit Oakland's urban farmers and gardeners" but they definitely don't benefit our neighborhoods and most certainly do not benefit the animals. The issues are many: public health, public nuisance, economic concerns, and animal welfare issues. Unfortunately these issues are not addressed in the OFPC policy recommendations. You'll find no pictures of slaughterhouses in the well designed reports. You won't even see a picture of an animal in there.

In all the recent excitement OFPC seems to have gotten a bit too far ahead of itself here. Perhaps it's time for everyone to chill out, take a trip out to the garden, and rethink this business of backyard slaughterhouses?