In West town, two renters who live above a chicken market are defending the shop while animal rights activists demand Pollo Vivos doors to be closed for good.
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“We’d love to provide an alternate viewpoint to the protesters on how a small neighborhood shop has been operating as a community center as well as a source for cheap, healthy, humane food for the neighborhood for decades,” Alex Burkholder said.
A project manager at an architecture firm, Burkholder has lived above Alliance Poultry Market – which does business under the name Pollos Vivos – for close to six years. His lawyer neighbor, Logan Deane, moved two years ago to another apartment above Pollos Vivos.
Burkholder and Deane said the activists’ characterization of the shop at 1636 W. Chicago Ave. as a slaughterhouse was “one-sided”.
“The chickens are Amish as the protester acknowledged, and they’re absolutely delicious. They arrive every night (took a while to get used to the clucking!) and when you go into the shop, they let you pick which chicken you’re getting before they butcher it for you,” Burkholder said.
Burkholder added, “It’s disappointing that the protesters are targeting a locally-owned, farm-to-table shop like this when it’s as close of an educational opportunity about where food comes from as you can get in the city. You see the chickens alive and well before you eat them. Circle of life.”