[Gandan57]

My grandchildren and I feed the ducks and swans on the local pond with stale bread. Is this now illegal?

[hillfooter]

I too believe this legislation prohibits animals, which are generally defined as farmed animals (which includes chickens), from being fed waste from a kitchen or even food prepared in a kitchen which is also used to prepare human food.  This is to prevent an animal, which might enter the human food chain, being fed any animal products (meat) or any feed which might be contaminated by an animal product.  So it's OK to feed your pet cat or dog anything prepared in a kitchen but not your pet chicken even though it will never enter the human food chain.  In a chicken's case the eggs will no doubt be entering the human food chain.

The legislation was brought in in the wake of the BSE problem, which was a big wake up event for British agriculture, and designed to prevent cross contamination between species which form part of the human food chain.

If you are doing this with vegatables but not meat products the chances of actually being prosecuted for doing it are remote.  However if you were feeding your animals from the waste from your local takeaway that would definitely be breaking the law and could result in prosecution.

This also has implications for feeding chickens cat food a practice which I often see suggested as a way of adding protein to their diet during moult.

It's also no defence to leave such food available so the chickens have access to it and help themselves.  If you take no precautions to preclude chickens from the dog or cats feed bowl you are technically breaking the law.

Whether you agree wiith this or not, or think it nonsense, is irrelevant in the eyes of the law, that's the way it is.
HF

[hillfooter]

My grandchildren and I feed the ducks and swans on the local pond with stale bread. Is this now illegal?

I suspect technically it is (it depends on the classification of the ducks as farmed animals and the classification of the bakery I think) though in practise it is unlikely to lead to a prosecution.

HF

[Lindeggs]

I've read about those rules on here before, and someone linked to the legislation so I certainly believe it to be true.  Fortunately I am in NZ so that law doesn't apply to me, but I can understand how, after something as frightening as the BSE issue, people could be convinced that such legislation was necessary.

In NZ you are not allowed to donate blood if you were in the UK for six months or more between 1980 and 1996.  (For example if you made three visits of two months during that time.)  That excludes a lot of potential blood donors!

Anyway as a vegetarian household in New Zealand, I'm pretty confident that my home-made tomato sauce is a fairly low health risk.  I'm more concerned about the pesky sparrows introducing salmonella while they are stealing the chickens' food! 

[New shoot]

When BSE came to light, so did a lot of information that makes the law make perfect sense.  Sheep that had died of scrapy were being proccessed into cattle feed, which in turn led to people being infected with the human form of BSE from infected beef  I assume the sheep meat was used to boost the protein content of the cattle feed to get beef cattle to fatten up quicker, but I think most people thought it was not right to feed vegetarian cows any form of meat.

As we know chickens are not vegetarian and rate kitchen scraps very highly.  Hillfooter has explained the law and what might in theory lead to prosecution.  We're grown ups and you make your own decisions.  I don't feed cat or dog food to my lot, but they get scraps and mealworms.  HF has given his leftover smoked salmon as posted on here and his lot wolfed that.  If you are eating the eggs you have total control over what goes into them - bar the worms, slugs and bugs they snarf down when they free range of course 

I would happily feed mine spag and tomato sauce, but would stand well back having read Lindeggs post     

[hillfooter]

You need to remember that this legislation was brought in at a time when British meat production was facing a major crisis and firm measures had to be taken quickly to restore confidence so that it didn't collapse completely.  It probably was more zealous than it would have been had there not been BSE and this urgent need to act.

How the law is applied is another matter and I don't think anyone who keeps pet chickens in a back garden environment need worry unduly unless they are blatantly flounting the law and / or putting the public health at risk through selling animal produce  to the general public which has been fed in this way.

As Newshoot says I'm personally not a zealot about this and my chickens get cooked vegatable leftovers occassionally  though I don't generally allow them any animal meat produce as much for the harm I think it might do nutrionally if it was done regularly as for the law.  Unless of course it's smoked salmon!

HF
 

[New shoot]

Well you've set the standard high with your girls now HF.  They would hardly dane to look at meat scraps having tasted the high life   

Mine would probably take my arm off for smoked salmon 

[Dominic]

Dont shoot at the messenger.

What the law clearly intended is of no relevence to how the law will be enforced by power mad local council employees, RSPCA know it alls and magistrates.

Remember, they are not required to demonstrate that your kitchen scraps are contaminated, YOU are required to demonstrate that YOUR kitchen scraps could not ever be contaminated.  That is simply not possible to demonatrate without a seperate kitchen.

Turning up in court saying "I'm always careful to wipe down my surfaces" wont protect you.