Lots of municipalities are facing requests to allow small-scale farm-type activities in backyards. Most of the coverage recently has gone to backyard chicken production. This might be as small as a few chickens laying eggs for personal use to 15 or 20 birds supplying a few families. Most recently Michigan agriculture leaders have been discussing the allowance of to five chickens per residence in Grand Rapids, but would prohibit the slaughtering of chickens and keeping roosters.

Egg-wise, sounds good. Food safety risk-wise, maybe not so great.

A 2007-2008 outbreak of Salmonella in Minnesota was linked initially to handling live chickens, but then spread to food workers in a grocery store deli, one of whom kept some chickens at home. This week’s food safety infosheet details the outbreak and highlights some of the risks of food workers handling live animals.

You can download the infosheet here.