VANCOUVER, British Columbia: Court Defines What Is a Chicken

/reuters/ A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has laid down the law: a chicken is a chicken no matter how it is raised.
The trial court rejected an organic farmer's claim that he did not need a production license from the Canadian province's chicken marketing board because, he said, it had authority only to regulate conventional, non-organic chicken farms.
Justice Lynn Smith ruled on Thursday there was nothing in the law that established the British Columbia Chicken Marketing Board that would "exclude organically raised chicken from the meaning of the word 'chicken'."
The farmer had objected to paying fees to the board. The board argued that would be unfair to other farmers, including at least one who also raised his chickens organically but abided by the board's production quotas.