Slaughtering animals has become a topic of concern for Carrboro residents. The Board of Aldermen met Nov. 21 to reassess an ordinance passed in February that permits animal slaughter within the town limits.
At the meeting, the board did not vote to change or remove the ordinance. Instead, it was a chance for them to reevaluate the ordinance and take into consideration questions and issues that have been raised.
“Depending on what those answers are and how board members and the public respond to the issue, we will decide to either not do anything about it, let the ordinance stand, tweak it or change it,” said Aldermen Board member Sammy Slade in reference to the meeting.
Randee Haven-O’Donnell, Board of Aldermen member and science educator at Durham Academy, raised the initial concern about the animal slaughter ordinance.
“In a lab’s standard procedure, there is a whole protocol for managing blood, organism body fluids, fecal material and then the disposal of an organism,” Haven-O’Donnell said.
Haven-O’Donnell said there is a risk with allowing certain bloodborne and other bodily pathogens to get into the soil and surface waters. The state has laws about animal disposal and burial that addresses the concerns that Haven-O’Donnell raised to the town of Carrboro.
At the meeting, Police Chief Walter Horton said since the ordinance’s passing, there had been no complaints on the record about it.
“There are a lot of questions on both sides of the issue, as you can imagine,” Horton said in an email.
