Cluck, cluck
Reporter Rebecca Kimitch wrote this story for today's paper about the Chinese American Live Poultry slaughterhouse in Rosemead. This place has been an issue for years...
Store owners say they offer the San Gabriel Valley's immigrants a taste of the old country and keep them from manhandling live chickens in their backyards and garages.
But some neighbors say a slaughterhouse has no business operating in the city, which lately has been looking for a facelift. They also say this store in particular has been bad for the neighborhood because it violates laws, reeks of rotting chickens and flushes blood down drains.
"After all this time, this is not the kind of business that should be in Rosemead," resident Jean Hall said at last week's planning commission meeting.
Regardless, the city is opening the door for more such establishments in Rosemead.
Whether they will come depends on the pocketbooks of the newly arrived and the tastes of those already here.
The planning commission voted
5-0 last week to recommend the City Council change the municipal code to allow poultry slaughtering in the city. The council may vote on the issue at its December meeting.
Slaughterhouses have been prohibited in Rosemead since 2001. CAL Poultry opened a decade before that and was allowed to stay under the condition that it does not expand.
Two years ago complaints from neighbors began to pour in to the city. Chickens ran loose in the streets, blood was flushed down drains and broken eggs rotting in the sun created horrible odors, they said.
Last year, the city tried to force the business to move but ran into challenges since it is legally allowed to be there.
CAL Poultry owners now want to make improvements to the slaughterhouse, including raising the roof six feet to reduce odors and limit its impact on nearby homes and businesses.
They need the change in municipal code in order to do so and their expansion is the only reason the city is even considering the amendment. But in making the request, CAL Poultry could bring competition.
Anybody got any stories about this place, good, bad or indifferent?
GROSS! This type of business should not take place. I am appalled that the Rosemead Planning Commission approve this...OH GEEZ....GROSS.
I SAY...I...I...I....I SAY i couldn't agree more. (Are you listenin' to be son). Killin' chickens is just plain...I SAY...just plain WRONG.
The existing poultry company is a "legal, non-conforming use." We don't have the option to shut them down, so rejecting the proposed ordinance would have just maintained the status quo, which everyone agrees is imperfect.
City staff looked at other poultry slaughterhouses in LA's Chinatown and they're convinced the proposed renovations will control the odor and water quality issues. But the renovations can't go forward without an ordinance that would change the use from "legal, non-conforming" to "legal."
In my opinion, voting seventeen years ago to make the use "legal, non-conforming" was short-sighted. It didn't make the business go away. It just make it impossible for them to keep their operations consistent with "best management practices."
BTW, is it just me or did this blog switch to a very dark background that makes it hard to read the posts?
Whoops. Where it says seventeen years ago, above, that should say seven years ago.
If you make the business go away, though, you have to pay the business off to relocate it. "Making a business go away" doesn't work in a free market society very well. Legal non-conforming uses usually have 10-20 years to amortize before they can be removed, and even then compensation or relocation expenses are usually required.