It is important that residents of Mississauga be allowed to keep a limited number of hens (no roosters) in their backyards.  Keeping hens would enable residents to provide a nutritious, delicious, safe, and environmentally friendly eggs for their families, while at the same time teaching our children where food comes from, and what it is worth. 

To quote a similar petition in Ottawa:

Dr. David Waltner-Toews, veterinarian, epidemiologist, and professor at the University of Guelph, has written that he knows of “no evidence linking human illness with keeping small urban flocks.”  Further, he believes that “if we do not make room for these urban entrepreneurs, we risk losing a set of very important food-rearing skills that will enable us to better navigate the economic, climatic and environmental instability our society will face in the coming decades.”

Backyard hens have always been allowed in many major US cities, including New York and Los Angeles. Canadian cities such as Vancouver and Brampton are now catching up.  Please let the residents of Mississauga join millions of other city dwellers in North America who are allowed to provide eggs for our families by keeping a few hens in the backyard.