‘Targets our religion’: Hmong community concerned over Fresno County rooster ordinance

FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – A Fresno County ordinance capping the number of roosters someone can own per property is causing a stir among the local Hmong community.

The ordinance will be read at the next Board of Supervisors meeting on Oct. 7 and, if passed, will be adopted into law within 30 days after that. However, the Hmong community says this new ordinance would threaten their livelihoods.

“We feel like we’re being attacked. We feel like we’re being silenced. We feel like we’re being discriminated against,” a Hmong community member said.

“We feel like this is directed to the community. We feel that this targets our religion,” another Hmong community member said.

Fresno’s Board of Supervisors is one step away from passing the ‘keeping of roosters’ ordinance – limiting five roosters per property without a permit. But folks at the Fresno Center are against it because they said it goes against their culture.

“Now you’re restricting them on that practice. You know, when we have a death in a family, when we have a funeral ritual, when we have a wedding, when we have a newborn baby, we use a rooster,” The Fresno Center President Pao Yang said.

Supervisor Luis Chavez supports the Hmong community’s concerns.

“I did not sponsor this item; my colleagues sponsor this item, and it came as a result of multiple complaints, challenges with cockfighting rings, with illegal gambling, with things of that sort,” Supervisor Luis Chavez said.

And the Fresno Center’s president saw a need to meet.

“Believe me, the community is all for the [end of] illegal cockfighting and all that and the noise and all that. But what they’re saying is, ‘Hey, deal with it. Don’t do a blanket ordinance over people that are innocent,’” Yang said.

He added that if anything, the ordinance needs to be further evaluated. “That’s what we’re calling for, a delay in this. And let’s rewrite this ordinance together so that it makes sense for everybody,” Yang said.