By JOHN F. BONFATTI
News Staff Reporter
2/5/2002
ANGELICA - Bheema, the most famous of Allegany County's 33,000 cattle, stood impassively in the Voith family living room, seemingly oblivious to the chanting and drum beating.
The cow was in the middle of the Voiths' 20-minute Hare Kirtan, a religious ceremony, but Bheema and three other Voith cows are also at the center of a collision of cultures in this village of 900 people about 90 miles southeast of Buffalo.
On the one side are the four cows, a goat, Stephen and Linda Voith and their three children. They are Krishna Bhaktivedantis, followers of a form of Krishna Consciousness whose beliefs include the protection and celebration of animals, most specifically cows.
On the other side are some neighbors, village residents and Village Board members, who contend that the Voiths' cows and goat violate an ordinance restricting farm animals in the village, and are a threat to public health and safety.
"If one of those animals ever came rampaging down Main Street and mowed over one of my customers, I would get sued," said Fluerette Pelletier, who owns an antique store about half a mile down Main Street from the Voiths' home.
The Voiths, who moved here from Ithaca in 2000 after buying an old home on Main Street , say the notion of their cows running amok in downtown Angelica is far-fetched.
"You can leave the back gate to our property open all day long, and they'll stay in the pen," Stephen Voith said, adding that the animals are fenced in at the back end of his property, separated from the house and Main Street by a ridge that bisects his land.
"Our cows don't rampage anywhere," he said. "They're extraordinarily docile."
But Voith was unable to convince the Village Board of that. It voted, 4-1, to deny the Voiths the permit that they need to keep the animals on their property.
The Voiths think that they are victims of religious persecution. So does the western regional office of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
"I really don't think this has anything to do with cows," said the office's executive director, Jeanne-Noel Mahoney.
"It does appear that their rights under the Constitution are being violated, and this is part of what we're looking into," she said. "We have not yet made any final decisions, but we're certainly looking into a federal lawsuit."
Meanwhile, the Voiths have appealed their conviction, and the animals remain on the property.
Village Attorney David T. Pullen said the Voiths' claim of religious persecution is baseless.
"Our position is that this has nothing to do with religion," he said. "They knew the circumstances when they purchased the property. This law has been in place since 1986 and has been applied uniformly to anyone who wants farm animals."
The ordinance says that farm animals cannot be kept on any village property of less than 10 acres unless a permit is obtained. Though it is not part of the ordinance, Pullen said, past Village Boards have made obtaining the permission of adjoining neighbors a condition for getting a permit.
Voith, whose lot includes about three acres [and is across the street from a beef and dairy goat farm], tried to get a permit. However, some neighbors, including next-door neighbor Darlene Ward [whose property abuts the goat farm], refused to give their approval.
Ward, whose house is about 50 yards from the Voiths', [complained at a public hearing on Jan 14, 2002 that her property values have gone down since ‘her new neighbors have moved in.' She went on to state that although there had not been any problems with odor or flies during the six months that the animals had resided on the Voith's property, she worried that there might be a problem come spring]
Some residents say they are bothered by Stephen Voith's chanting, but Voith said the chanting is nowhere near as loud or as sustained as the barking dogs and buzzing snowmobiles that bother him. "I don't hear anyone complaining about those noises," |
