On July 14th 1966, the executive council of the city of Montreal, presided by mayor Jean Drapeau, decided to forbid the butchering, slaughtering, breeding, fattening, raising and the selling of poultry and game on its territory.  After a meeting of the municipal council, this decision became law on October 5th of the same year, on the eve of the World Fair of 1967, and would forever alter Quebec’s food and cultural practices.  Five years later, we would also forbid the practice in the cities public markets.

Some people would claim victory for social progress translating in the exodus of "farm animals" to the country. Others would be relieved by the improvement in sanitary conditions downtown, eliminating droppings from the urban landscape. While others would denounce the loss to food autonomy, an interference in individual and collective freedoms and a blind generalization of the relationship between humans and animals in an urban setting.

It is therefore that in 2010, multiple large north-American cities, after public consultation reuniting citizens, experts, scientists and elected officials, have reintegrated certain animals such as laying hens into their city limits (Los Angeles, Seattle, Vancouver, New York and Chicago). Ottawa, Toronto and Gatineau are not to be left out and will start public consultations in the near future.

Considering that we have a legitimate and democratic right for collective decisions regarding actual and future societal issues, the signatories of this letter call on the executive council of the City of Montreal to mandate, and in the shortest of delays, the Montreal Public Consultation office to hold a public consultation on the future of urban agriculture in montreal, most notably on the potential for reintergrating laying hens into our urban landscape.

It is noted that the Montreal Public Consultation office was instituted in 2002 by article 75 in the City of Montreal Charter and that no public consultation was held in 1966 to forbid the butchering, slaughtering, breeding, fattening, raising and the selling of poultry and game within the Montreal city limits.

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