Camyuan and Paul Oliver, against the city of Calle, represents a challenge to a local law regulating the backyard of the backyard in the town of approximately 3,000 residents on the Canadian border, according to the constitutional “right of food” in Maine, which was passed in November 2021.
The “right of Maine in food” is not a bulletin, but a unique grant in the nation for individuals to grow, raise, collect, create and consume food from their choice. Upon adopting, some foretold that the “right to food” would lead to a flood of court challenges. It was more than that, but the Calais case was submitted on September 10 with the Washington Provincial Court in Maine, which may not be resolved until it reached the state’s Supreme Court.
In the case is the 2024-100 decree, adopted by Calis City Council on June 13, 2024, which regulates the rear yard chicken in the city’s most dense residential nucleus using relapses, site restrictions, and size requirements, with a limited herd of six chicken or less.
Kamiwan and Paul Olive are Mainers Rural Rural Lifelong of modest means, with three children, between the ages of 5, 10 and 10. Kamiwan continues its part -time business, and the urine of a sales partner. They live in an inherited house for one family on an area of a quarter of an acre in Calais. They relied on a form of general assistance to help meet the basic needs of their families, and sometimes they suffer from food insecurity when their income does not reliably provide enough food for everyone in the family.
When raising chicken since October 2023, olivers to use their own property to provide themselves directly – affecting a more stable and dignified nutrition source instead of relying on external aid. With the presence of 19 chicken and there is no shoe currently, they said 15 chickens and can not meet any of the roosters their needs. It does not provide eggs or chicken meat to anyone outside his family.
A lawsuit against the city of Calais depends on what it means to protect the “right to food” under the constitution of Maine.
“Prosecutors are lifting Camyuan and Paul Oliver a chicken to feed their families, but the local decree in Calah, Maine makes it practically impossible to do so. By imposing the requirements of property and strict structure – and prohibiting more than six chickens for each family – it is effective effectively preventing the population of the rear chicken.”
Olivs brings this lawsuit to impose “their natural, inherent and non -photographer right. Growth, lifting, attraction, production, and consuming their food that chooses them to feed them, fighting, physical health, and luxury “according to Article 1, Section 25 of the Main Constitution,” continues.
“This ruling, known as the“ Right to Food ”amendment, was ratified in 2021 and reflects the long max state values of self -efficiency and individual freedom. This is among the first challenges on local restrictions as not compatible with the family that gathered in nutrition.
While “the right to food” is the first new right recognized by the state constitution in 200 years, Olivs argues that the content is compatible with the history of Maine. “From colonial times to the state in the year 1820 to the present time, Mainers continued to feed their families with food that is grown, grew up, or gathered on Main soil,” according to the complaint.
The amendment of the “Right to Food” in Maine was approved by the large partisan majority of the legislative body and was later approved by about 61 percent of the voters, making it the first new right to the Maine constitution since the colonial days.
The unique new constitutional language devotes “the natural, inherent and non -photographed right. Growth, lifting, attracting, producing, and consuming their food that chooses them to feed them, their strength, physical health, and luxury.”
At that time, legislative shepherds said “the right to food” was explicitly designed to reduce government infiltration over the individual’s right to produce one’s food.
However, what this specifically means continues to appear in the legislative body in Maine.
Earlier this year, for example, a “verb to allow chicken to be kept on private residential property” was presented to facilitate the population throughout Main, keeping the backyard chicken by banning municipal embargo. But as the governor of Janet Mills signed on May 30, the changes in the statute do not exclude the municipality organization,
Min allowed “home food manufacturing” since 1980.
The amendment of the state constitution to include “the right to food” has grown from Main Food Sovereign Law, It was passed in 2017, which allows local governments in the state to legalize the sale of all types of homemade foods directly to consumers.
Before the law enters into force, the state passed amendment To exclude meat and home poultry treatment. The amendment also excludes sales in farmers’ markets and other public places. Under the Food Sovereignty Law, sales must occur in the “production site”, which means only on farms and private housing. By 2021, about 100 cities and towns in the state of Maine approved the law of food sovereignty.
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