How's this for Voluntary??

How to Become a Serf in One Easy Step

by Doreen Hannes

::What's the premise behind Premise Identification in the NAIS::

All you have to do is register your property with the USDA under the National Animal Identification System. You'll be assigned a seven-character number that stays with the property forever and the USDA "owns" that number according to " A User Guide" which is their latest public document on the program.

The premise id number or PIN will set you solidly in the position of giving up your rights to ownership. How can I say that? Well, words have meaning for a reason. The USDA, in their original documents regarding NAIS, refers to participants as "stakeholders" repeatedly, twenty one times in the Draft Strategic Plan alone. They also use the term "national herd" and tell us that NAIS is necessary to protect the health and marketability of the "national herd". First let's look at the PIN and then at animal identification with official NAIS compliant tags.

The USDA claims to "own" the PIN (page6 A User Guide) and when one is assigned a PIN either through truly volunteering for it or being rolled into it via other disease control programs, it stays with the property forever (Draft Program Standards pg 16-read the whole section on PIN) and the person who owns the property becomes a stakeholder. The definition of stakeholder is as follows:

"The term stakeholder, as traditionally used in the English language in law and notably gambling, is a third party who temporarily holds money or property while its owner is still being determined."

Yep. While it's owner is still being determined. It doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy. Now let's look at the definition of ownership as a comparison. Wikipedia defines the term as follows:

"Ownership is the state or fact of exclusive possession or control of property, which may be an object, land/real estate, intellectual property or some other kind of property. It is embodied in an ownership right also referred to as title."

So, if you have exclusive possession or control of the property in question, how can you be a stakeholder? Well, you can't be. Either it's your property, or it's someone else's property. With the NAIS, it's not your property once you have a PIN making you a stakeholder and putting you under the jurisdiction of the Area Veterinarian In Charge or AVIC. ("A User Guide" is loaded with 'consult your AVIC' with any questions about anything.)

This brings about some very serious questions regarding not only livestock but also real estate. Since the USDA "owns" the Premise Identification Number (page 6 "A User Guide") and the number can only be 'inactivated' and not expunged or completely annihilated, does it create an encumbrance on property with the PIN? Should that be part of the disclosure on the property? What happens if someone who doesn't want to be in NAIS in any way buys property with a PIN? (You know, since it's "voluntary".) Are they automatically put into the position of stakeholder under the authority of the AVIC? Will the USDA expunge that PIN upon request? According to USDA documents, even though the program is 'voluntary at the Federal level", the PIN stays permanently with the property, not with the person who applied for the PIN. What about the person whose property was assigned a PIN via the roll in procedures that have been employed to increase premise registration numbers using other programs like scrapie and brand registration or participation in the QSA program for cattle? What are the answers to these questions? It sure looks like they will need to be determined in court, as the USDA has no answers available in any of their documents.


Then of course we want to know who owns the "national herd" anyway? It can't be the stakeholder who has been assigned a premise identification number, because the stakeholder is waiting for the rightful owner to be determined, and it can't be the county or the state if this is indeed the National Animal Identification System. When NAIS is in full implementation, all covered animals, 29 species from clams to cattle, will be required to have official identification. Official identification consists of a NAIS compliant number issued with the country code at the beginning. The country code for the United States is 840. It may or may not surprise you to learn that the 840 code covers all financial instruments, like stocks, checks, and bearable securities otherwise known as dollar bills. You can find this beautiful tidbit by searching for ISO-4217. This International Organization of Standards code covers only financial instruments. When I first looked into the 840 country code there was no designation for 840 under the claimed code of ISO-3166 which is a manufacturing standard. There were only two and three character alpha codes, like US and USA, in ISO-3166. The only assignations 6 months ago for "840" were in the ISO-4217 standard which covers financial instruments and a UN assigned country code.

Regulations are already in place making it unlawful to remove or tamper with an official identification device. (User guide page 39) This regulation will lead to fully implemented three component NAIS in the not too distant future. Here's the thing, if you cannot remove an NAIS tag from an animal and the person who sold the animal is a participant in NAIS then the sale of the animal will need to be reported as a high risk activity, and the premise id of the person buying the officially identified animal will have to be recorded, or assigned whichever the case may be, the premise id is not to be expunged only inactivated if animals are no longer held on the property. No rules have been promulgated regarding whether or not official devices must be disclosed as being affixed to the animal at a sale barn, so one could actually purchase an animal with no foreknowledge of it's status as an NAIS compliant animal. However there are plenty of references to participation in the NAIS being built upon the PIN as the foundation of the system. You can't have an NAIS id device on an animal without having a PIN, you can't record 'events' regarding an animal in the NAIS information repositories without having an NAIS identification device on the animal. It's one, two, three, with the foundation of the entire system being premise identification and changing the status of the property holder from owner to stakeholder.

To further substantiate my claims, please look into the case of Mr. Dobbins in the United Kingdom. Some of his numbers on his registered show herd of dairy cattle were not jibing with their passports, so Defra (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, the UK's USDA) took all of his cattle passports and confiscated his entire herd giving him 48 hours to positively identify all 576 of his cattle before they destroyed them. He couldn't identify them because Defra had confiscated all of his documents. It's like show me the title to the car, while I have taken the title and hidden it in my house thirty miles away. As an added slap in the face, no indemnity is necessary under EC regulations when animals are not identified in exact compliance with their regulations. The man's entire livelihood was destroyed because not every piece of paper was in the prescribed order.

The USDA doesn't seem to think we can add these things together well enough to see why we have no choice but to resist this scheme with everything we have because they truly believe we are not competent enough to see the correlations between other nation's experiences with these systems and then extrapolate the consequences for ourselves. In the USDA's NAIS How-To-Handbook for their partners in the crime of NAIS implementation, they advise that all messages for potential NAIS stakeholders be designed for a sixth grade reading level. They also give the 'major themes' of those of us opposing the program and state that our arguments all 'fall into a few buckets'. They never do address any of the arguments, and they fail to acknowledge two of the largest arguments of religious objections and Constitutional issues. The Handbook is quite a piece of work and illustrates how "open and transparent" the USDA really is about their desires for the program….After all, they are so open that we had to get a user name with a password to even see the documents they've spent taxpayer money developing to sell this program to people without full disclosure and with no actual cost analysis.

It seems to me that those at the top of the NAIS food chain think that since we trade real labor for fake money to pay fraudulent taxes on stuff we don't own we wouldn't notice just one more affront. It's time to shake off your righteous indignation and ask these officials if they'd like some Boston Tea. ***

Please check out these links:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/18/nbook18.xml Dobbins article

Visit: www.nonais.org and scroll down the right hand side for USDA documents on NAIS. At the very least you need to read the 2005 Draft Strategic Plan, then The Implementation Plan and the User Guide.

My articles are also housed at News With Views, newswithviews.com
http://www.newswithviews.com/Hannes/doreen4.htm

NAIS Spawned by International Entanglements

This is probably the most notable thing I have written thus far. All I can say is that after spending hundreds of hours looking for the genesis of this obsession with control (other than the obvious greed inspired motives) I finally found the absolute proof and God helped to make it understandable while retaining all the pertinent information.......

by Doreen Hannes

If you've been wondering where the insanity masquerading as our federal government 'food safety' and animal health protection regulations and laws are coming from, you can now say with certainty that they descend from the organizations within and tied to our international alliances.

Before you throw a conditioned response out that this is all just 'conspiracy theory' propagated by right wing nut cases, you had best be able to understand the impact on trade of the SPS and TBT agreements made through the WTO (World Trade Organization) and be able to relate the position of the United States in the OIE and Codex.

Should you be unfamiliar with the NAIS (National Animal Identification System) the shortest explanation that can be given of the proposed system is that anyone who has any type of livestock, say two chickens, will have to register their property, complete with global positioning satellite coordinates, microchip their chickens with an NAIS ISO11785 compliant chip, and report within 24 hours if said chickens ever leave the property, hatch out chicks (another chip required), go to the vet or die. No kidding. To learn more about that, you must read the "Draft Strategic Plan" and the "Draft Standards" which are available only on line. The USDA will not send you copies of these documents, but they will send you a nice glossy packet with a 'soft' description of the program.

This is not an easy subject to relate to people who, by design, have very limited knowledge of our government's involvement in these organizations, and even less understanding about the mechanisms employed in the organizations. It's extremely complicated, and at the very least veiled to public scrutiny, but if you are willing to dig and read hundreds of pages of mind numbing rules and agreements, it is there and it is proven.

An introduction to acronyms is necessary. The players involved in the proposed National Animal Identification System being pushed by the USDA, and to be managed by APHIS (Animal Plant Health Inspection Service) are varied. First there is the WTO (World Trade Organization) which reached an agreement amongst participating countries several years ago in Uruguay called the SPS (Sanitary and Phytosanitary) and TBT (Technical Barriers to Trade) agreements.

In laymen's terms what the SPS agreement says is that each member country can make regulations that must be met by other member countries in order to trade in agricultural goods with each other. These regulations must be in the interest of protecting the country making the regulations from disease, pests, or perceived health dangers. Countries making regulations cannot impose more strict regulations on importer nations than they do on their own nation.

Then there was the TBT (Technical Barriers to Trade) agreement made at the same time in Uruguay. What that says is that developed countries must help less developed countries to advance technologically to be able to participate in trade with other member countries. Developed countries cannot require more than a country is able to achieve and the developed countries need to help the less developed countries to meet their own criteria through funding and other assistance.

Then there is the OIE (Office Internacional Epizooities) or World Animal Health Organization, which although it is independent of the UN in origin works very closely with both the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) and Codex Alimentarius which is a child of the UN and FAO. Codex can be best understood as being the global FDA and OIE as the global USDA. The Untied States of America has membership in both the OIE and the UN and therefore Codex.

The OIE has authority over all member nations veterinary services. Most of the OIE rules are rather innocuous, however they have become increasingly involved in issues directly relating to trade since the advent of the WTO in 1994. OIE has also been increasingly involved with Codex and are working in concert on nearly everything at this time. Of particular importance to the subject of the NAIS (National Animal Identification System) is the issue of 'traceability/product tracing' and 'good farming practices'.

The OIE has a publication available on line called the "Terrestrial Animal Health Standards Commission" which is absolutely loaded with information regarding "traceability/product tracing" and Codex standards on the subject.

On page 41 of the TAHSC (Terrestrial Animal Health Standards Commission) it states that there is a critical relationship between animal identification and the traceability of animal products and that animal identification and traceability are "key tools for animal health, including zoonoses (diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans), and food safety", as well as "incidents, vaccination programmes, herd/flock management, zoning/compartmentalization, surveillance, early response and notification systems, animal movement controls, and health measures to facilitate trade."

Also worth noting from page 41 is the following paragraph:

"The Competent Authority in partnership with relevant government agencies and the private sector should establish a legal framework for the implementation and enforcement of animal identification and animal traceability in the country. In order to facilitate compatibility and consistency, relevant international standards and obligations should be taken into account. This legal framework should include elements such as the objectives, scope, organizational agreements including the choice of technologies used for identification and registration, obligation of the parties, confidentiality, accessibility issues and the efficient exchange of information."

In Appendix XXXIV of the Terrestrial Animal Health Standards document it states that VS (veterinary services) are the "Competent Authority" for animal identification and traceability in all member countries. It also does such fun things as role the words "animal identification system" into the word "animal identification" so that the smaller term may legally be referred to meaning an entire national or international system.

The European Union has made no real secret of the fact that their animal identification requirements are in line with both Codex and the OIE. It is my understanding that RFID will also be a mandatory requirement in the EU in January of 2008. There are a few catch phrases that have become fairly common stemming from the mandates of Codex, such as "farm to fork" traceability and "from stable to table", that leave no doubt of the identity of the progenitors of the US National Animal Identification System. The USDA and the OIE and Codex as well as the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) state that this is consumer driven.

While there may be a desire on the part of consumers to know the conditions under which their food was raised, the conditions which spark that desire are not conditions caused by small or medium sized agricultural endeavors, or even large privately owned operations. The corporate ag companies with their disregard for life and use of chemicals, antibiotics and hormones to improve their bottom line are responsible for the lack of confidence felt by those who cannot raise their own food. Yet the net effect of this program will be much higher cost for food and a loss of choice for the consumer as smaller farmers will be driven out of business by the costs of compliance and loss of production time because of the increase in paperwork and reporting needs as well as the many millions who will not be able to comply with the system because of deeply held religious convictions or aversions to the loss of freedom necessitated by the monitoring and surveillance implicit in this program.

As a matter of fact, corporate ag will be one of the few beneficiaries of this system because they will be allowed to tag their animals as groups or lots under only one tag per group/lot whereas those who practice more natural forms of animal rearing will need to tag each and every animal born at additional cost with additional reporting time. Reports may also be required on what is being fed to the stock as 'assurance' schemes are repeatedly referred to in both OIE and Codex guidelines.

On page 37 of theTAHSC (Terrestrial Animal Health Standards Commission document referred to above) there is a clear and indisputable tie to the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 which passed into law and is enforced by the FDA in the United States. The Bioterrorism Act of 2002 is the Act which is requiring that hay producers in the US register their premises and report who drove the truck, which field it was from, who worked on the harvesting of the hay and to whom the hay was sold. A quote from the TAHSC document showing the clear link follows:

"…the Task Force on Animal Feeding (May 2004) agreed to add a footnote to the title of Section 4.3 "Traceability/Product Tracing and Record keeping of Feed and Feed Ingredients" to indicate the definition developed by the Codex committee on General Principles applied to the Code (Terrestrial Animal Health Code, of the OIE) as appropriate…..the prompt trace-back of feed and feed ingredients should be to the immediate previous source and trace forward should be to the next subsequent recipients."


Throughout these documents are references to harmonization of identification and traceability methods and standards. In one document by Perry, harmonization is defined as, "the establishment, recognition and application of common sanitary and phyto sanitary measures by different Members." The United States is a "Member" so the directions following harmonization apply to the US. For food safety, (feed included) we must refer to Codex, for animal health the authority goes to the OIE. In the World Trade Organization documents regarding the SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary agreement) and the TBT (technical barriers to trade agreement) it is recommended that any disputes be mediated by the OIE or Codex.

It is abundantly clear that through these international entanglements our officials are both legislating and regulating our God given and Constitutionally guaranteed rights away. In the name of international trade and globalization these officials have agreed to implement a plan that is destructive to our nation's existence, as well as our freedom to feed ourselves without intense surveillance.

As a nation we must ask ourselves, is our freedom for sale in the global market? Is selling beef to Japan important enough to throw our Constitution and our children's future into the trash can? Can we not support ourselves agriculturally with the excellent controls we already have in place? Is your freedom worth more than all the bananas you may eat? To quote Patrick Henry, "Is life so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me,___________________________. I hope you can fill in the blank. **

** You may forward this or reprint it so long as you keep it in it's entirety and don't change anything. Thanks!

Where Do We Go from here?

The NAIS will lead to excessive use of government enforcement measures as is happening in other countries that have implemented these types of programs. The USDA already has the Falliace sheep debacle, and the rather recent Henshaw and Davis Wild Russian Boar issue under their belts. Seeing this come in from the UK let's you know what will happen if your papers are incorrect. the regulators at work.......

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/18/nbook18.xml

Christopher Booker's notebook

By Christopher Booker, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 2:37am GMT 19/03/2007


Papers were not in order, so they had to die

Of all the stories I have covered about what is now called the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, few have been more remarkable than the disaster that has just befallen David Dobbin, a 43-year-old Cheshire farmer, who derived his entire livelihood from a large dairy herd. His 567 cows, including pedigree Ayrshires and Holsteins, had won prizes, and were worth upwards of £500,0000.

In 2005 Cheshire trading standards officials, acting for Defra (one hopes Cheshire's taxpayers do not mind officials whose salaries they pay acting for a government department) began a long series of visits, to inspect the documentation required for Mr Dobbin's cattle under EC rules. The more they attempted to check the animals' eight-digit ear tags against their EC "cattle passports", the more they claimed to have found "irregularities", although they failed to explain how many or what these were.
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Last November, on Defra's instructions, the officials seized all Mr Dobbin's passports, making it illegal for him to move animals off his farm and all but wiping out his income. Last month, serving him with a "notice to identify", they removed his herd to another farm, stating that, under EC regulation 494/98, it was their intention to destroy all 567 animals.

Dating back to the BSE panic, this diktat says that "if the keeper of an animal cannot prove its identification in two working days, it shall be destroyed without delay" and "without compensation". These powers, as I noted when the regulation was issued in 1998, were unprecedented. Nevertheless the regulation permits officials to destroy only animals that cannot be identified. Defra has never claimed that the paperwork for most of Mr Dobbin's cows was not in order, only that the officials had found "what they believed to be an unacceptable level of non-compliance with the regulations", and that this "could have serious implications for the protection of the human food chain".

Less than an hour before slaughter was due to begin, Mr Dobbin's combative Liverpool lawyer, David Kirwan, got a High Court injunction, giving the cows a stay of execution. He also won leave from Mr Justice Goldring for judicial review, on the grounds that Defra was acting beyond its powers. But this month, as the injunction expired, Defra insisted that, unless Mr Dobbin could prove the identification of every one of his animals, they must still be destroyed. Since all his passports, the most obvious means of identification, had been confiscated, this was impossible.

Defra told the court that Mr Dobbin would instead have to provide DNA identification for each animal, within two days. This would have been technically impossible, even if Defra had not moved the cows elsewhere and refused him access.

The need to proceed with the slaughter, Defra argued, was urgent, because it had no resources to look after the cattle properly, causing severe "animal welfare" problems. The judge felt he had little option but to give the go-ahead, and on March 8 and 9 the cows were destroyed.

All Mr Dobbin can now hope for is that the judicial review may confirm that Defra acted outside the law. The officials agreed in court that they had never used these powers on anything like such a scale before. It has not been claimed that Mr Dobbin's animals posed any health risk (BSE this year is down to a single case). His only alleged offence was "non-compliance" with complex bureaucratic procedures, to an extent which Defra still cannot specify. For this he has seen his livelihood go up in smoke, without a penny in compensation.

A Handbook for the NAIS Pushers

This is from my friend Mary, a fellow freedom fighter against the NAIS.....Excellent job on this, and quick, too!




USDA Internal Handbook Advises Animal-Identification Staff to Address Farmers “at the Sixth Grade Level”

The USDA’s confidential “NAIS How-To Handbook,” intended for non-public distribution to Federal and State NAIS personnel, reveals an aggressive campaign to implement NAIS in the face of farmer opposition by strictly controlling communications, manipulating media coverage, concealing the original NAIS program documents, and discrediting opponents.

by

Mary Zanoni, Ph.D., J.D.
P.O. Box 501
Canton, NY 13617
315-386-3199
mlz@slic.com

March 29, 2007

A USDA “NAIS (National Animal Identification System) How-To Handbook,” most recently revised in February 2007, instructs all State and Federal NAIS staff aggressively to promote the supposedly “voluntary” premises ID program. The goal of the campaign and the How-To Handbook is to “increase . . . premises registration results” and to promote during 2007 not only “continued growth in premises registration,” but also the “adoption of animal ID and tracing.” (Handbook, p. 1; USDA’s NAIS Community Outreach bulletin, Feb. 2007, p. 1.)

The Handbook demands uniformity and strict adherence to four “key messages” that staff are to present to audiences of farmers when promoting NAIS. As described by the USDA, these “key messages” “are organized into topic categories and supported with concise sentences. They are designed for an audience reading at the sixth grade level.” (Handbook, p. 41.)

The Handbook originally was designed for a meeting in Kansas City in late October 2006, attended by a total of 132 “State ID Coordinators, Federal ID Coordinators, and members of various livestock industry associations.” (NAIS Community Outreach bulletin, Dec. 2006, p. 1.) The meeting was designed to train all NAIS personnel to adhere strictly to “a communications campaign currently being implemented at the National level.” (Handbook, p. 3.) After the original USDA mandatory NAIS plan, set forth in the Draft Strategic Plan and Draft Program Standards of April 2005, met with an unexpected level of strong opposition from farmers and animal owners, the USDA hired a public-relations firm to analyze the opposition and repackage NAIS with a more congenial-sounding message. (Presentation by Dore Mobley, USDA/APHIS information officer, at the National Institute for Animal Agriculture’s “ID Expo,” August 2006.)

The apparent upshot of the professional public-relations advice was USDA’s completely new marketing campaign for NAIS, implemented in the fall of 2006. Crucial components of the marketing campaign included the Oct. 2006 Kansas City meeting, the Handbook and related promotional materials, and the release of the “NAIS User Guide” in November 2006.

When the USDA launched its new public-relations campaign for NAIS in the fall of 2006, the agency at the same time removed from its website the original NAIS documents, i.e., the Draft Strategic Plan and Draft Program Standards of April 2005. The common criticism of NAIS as “Orwellian” relies in significant part upon the USDA’s expungement of the Draft Strategic Plan and Draft Program Standards from the USDA site. The November 2006 “User Guide” stated that it superseded all previous program documents for NAIS. (User Guide, front cover.)

The “new” NAIS approach: emphasize “voluntary,” but aggressively pursue the maximum number of premises IDs and prepare for individual animal ID and animal tracking. The declared purpose of the Handbook is to “increase . . . premises registration results” (p. 1). Its primary goal is to “contribute significantly toward NAIS premises registration totals,” and reach “NAIS premises registration goals” (p. 4). Animal ID staff are told to emphasize “which messages hit home,” that is, which messages increase premises registration (p. 6). Staff are told to avoid wasting effort on strongly anti-NAIS audiences and instead direct effort toward “On The Fence” or “Pro-NAIS” “targets,” to maximize the number of premises signed up (pp. 7-8). Staff are advised not to “invest[ ] time” in “Anti-NAIS producers” and instead “locate and motivate more favorable individuals” (p. 9). While staff are to tell farmers that participation in premises ID will not compel them to participate in either individual animal ID or animal tracking (Handbook, p. 42), at the same time, staff are to pursue the second and third components of NAIS, “adoption of animal ID and tracing,” during 2007. (NAIS Outreach bulletin, Feb. 2007, p. 1).

USDA promulgates a unified, monolithic message to be used by all NAIS staff. The main purpose of the Kansas City meeting, the Handbook, and the USDA-promulgated advertising and outreach materials has been to focus the NAIS State and Federal staff on a consistent strategy and to prevent staff departures from the USDA-mandated NAIS “message.” As the USDA tells Federal and State NAIS staff, “The Handbook is designed to complement a communications campaign currently being implemented at the National level” (p. 3). The goal is to “change the perceptions of individuals who may be misinformed or confused about the details of the NAIS program.” Staff must use “uniform messages” (p. 4) and carefully follow the instructions on the “APHIS-led communication and information network” (p. 5). Federal and State NAIS staff must conform to “the key messages USDA will use at the national level” (p. 12). “USDA spokespersons are using the messages provided in the Appendix [of the Handbook] to provide consistent information at the national and local level. These messages will be used in speeches, print materials, media interviews and elsewhere” (p. 14). With apparent unconscious irony, at the very time the USDA is enforcing staff adherence to the precise assigned “messages,” the agency simultaneously acknowledges that a common objection voiced by farmers to NAIS is that the program “sounds like Big Brother government” (p. 7). Should it appear that all government presentations on NAIS are beginning to sound alike -- well, they are all alike, precisely alike, and it’s by careful design.

USDA instructs Federal and State staff on how to manipulate media coverage of NAIS. The USDA makes clear to NAIS staff that spontaneous responses to the media are not acceptable. As to Federal NAIS employees, we are told, “Federal staff are not authorized to handle media interviews.” Federal staff must refer all media matters to the USDA Legislative and Public Affairs Office (p. 16). Staff are encouraged, however, to use such controlled channels as op-ed pieces, letters to the editor to correct “misinformation,” and canned interviews with experts; the USDA urges staff to rely on the “complete message control” available by communicating through a NAIS website (p. 17). The properly authorized expert communications staff are encouraged to pitch canned pro-NAIS stories to the media, to attempt to influence media editorial content through attending editorial board meetings, and to compose “opinion pieces” “to explain the value of premises registration” (p. 19).

USDA reveals results of its NAIS “Opposition Analysis” and creates standardized responses to the NAIS opposition. The NAIS How-To Handbook’s treatment of the “NAIS Opposition” carefully portrays this opposition as nameless and faceless, and avoids specifying the exact points upon which the opposition arguments are based. The USDA implies that the opposition consists of insignificant “groups and individuals” who are just somehow “mistaken”: “The opposition’s information is largely based on misinformation and misunderstanding, but their zeal and emotion appeal is real” (p. 22).

Although the USDA studiously avoids naming its NAIS opponents, in fact they include: a growing list of groups such as the Northeast Organic Farming Association, R-CALF, the Sierra Club, Food and Water Watch, the National Family Farm Coalition, Family Farm Defenders, Community Farm Alliance of Kentucky, Rural Vermont, Cattle Producers of Washington, South Dakota Stockgrowers Association, Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association. Some of these groups have sponsored the introduction of antiNAIS legislation in at least 9 states in the 2007 legislative session. Similarly, the unspecified “individuals” opposed to the USDA’s implementation of NAIS in fact include medical doctors, information-technology professionals, financial planners, entrepreneurs, lawyers, public-interest lobbyists, and former government employees.

The USDA’s Handbook repeatedly refers to NAIS opponents’ “misinformation,” but fails to specify any statement of the opponents that is other than completely accurate. The USDA’s most detailed list of “opposition” statements, on pp. 23-24 of the Handbook, dates from January through August 2006 and does not identify any specific individuals as sources for the statements. The websites from which the statements are taken permit comments and postings by visitors, and the USDA’s quotations are not attributed to random visitors, more formal opposition statements, or any other particular source. One statement, the last under “Theme 3: Civil Liberties” (p. 23), obviously refers to the Real ID Act (a common ancillary topic of discussion on many NAIS opposition sites), and not to NAIS at all. Indeed, nearly all the statements the USDA quotes under “Opposition Themes” (pp. 23-24) are in fact quite accurate for their time frame of Jan. - Aug. 2006. During those months, the operative NAIS documents were the Draft Strategic Plan and Draft Program Standards, which did indeed impose a fully mandatory NAIS by 2008/2009 and did indeed require the participation of all common livestock species, the microchip or RFID individual identification of nearly all animals except factory-farm chickens and pigs, and the reporting of all animal “movements” and changes of status (birth, death, sale, purchase, slaughter, and all travel off-premises) within 24 hours. Only in subsequent documents did the USDA begin to waver as to some of the original requirements of the Draft Strategic Plan. And not until the USDA’s release of the User Guide in November 2006 did the USDA’s stated policy become “voluntary” rather than “mandatory” NAIS.

Even the USDA’s most comprehensive public-relations campaign can’t sell a bad NAIS system to justly skeptical farmers. The USDA’s Handbook, like its User Guide and its present NAIS approach generally, repeatedly speaks of needing to “correct” or adjust farmers’ attitudes or beliefs about NAIS. Why doesn’t the USDA actually examine the possible flaws in the design, the reasoning of, and the justification for NAIS, and abandon this unwanted and unwarranted intrusion of bureaucracy and technocracy into the lives of farmers and animal owners? Why is the USDA, as is so obvious throughout the Handbook, concerned only with appearance or “perception,” and not with reality?

For all that the USDA may think that farmers function “at the sixth grade level” (Handbook, p. 41), farmers seem to be just too smart to be lured by even the USDA’s most prettily baited NAIS hook. In January 2007, the USDA conducted NAIS “focus groups” in Sacramento, California, Springfield, Missouri, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (NAIS Community Outreach bulletin, March 2007, p. 1.) The participants in the “focus groups” were all livestock producers. The purpose of the “focus groups” was to gauge farmers’ responses to elements of the unified USDA NAIS public-relations campaign, particularly, the new NAIS promotional brochures and the USDA-imposed “key messages” for promoting NAIS. These farmers thus received only the USDA pro-NAIS messages and no “opposition” information. By the USDA’s own admission, these farmers, even after intensive exposure to the USDA’s well orchestrated campaign, would not accept premises registration. The USDA’s “key findings” about the attitudes of the focus-group farmers after they had received the USDA’s (and only the USDA’s) side of the NAIS story are:

“Respondents view NAIS as unwanted government intervention.”

“Current NAIS messaging and brochures will not necessarily motivate producers to register premises.”

So, after several years and multiple millions of dollars’ worth of pro-NAIS propaganda, farmers still want no part of NAIS. Perhaps the USDA should begin to entertain the notion that farmers might not be so “misinformed” after all. Maybe farmers are simply justifiably mistrustful of a government agency that insists on treating the very people it is supposed to serve like children.

NAIS Spawned by International Entanglements

If you've been wondering where the insanity masquerading as our federal government 'food safety' and animal health protection regulations and laws are coming from, you can now say with certainty that they descend from the organizations within and tied to our international alliances.

Before you throw a conditioned response out that this is all just 'conspiracy theory' propagated by right wing nut cases, you had best be able to understand the impact on trade of the SPS and TBT agreements made through the WTO (World Trade Organization) and be able to relate the position of the United States in the OIE and Codex.

Should you be unfamiliar with the NAIS (National Animal Identification System) the shortest explanation that can be given of the proposed system is that anyone who has any type of livestock, say two chickens, will have to register their property, complete with global positioning satellite coordinates, microchip their chickens with an NAIS ISO11785 compliant chip, and report within 24 hours if said chickens ever leave the property, hatch out chicks (another chip required), go to the vet or die. No kidding. To learn more about that, you must read the "Draft Strategic Plan" and the "Draft Standards" which are available only on line. The USDA will not send you copies of these documents, but they will send you a nice glossy packet with a 'soft' description of the program.

This is not an easy subject to relate to people who, by design, have very limited knowledge of our government's involvement in these organizations, and even less understanding about the mechanisms employed in the organizations. It's extremely complicated, and at the very least veiled to public scrutiny, but if you are willing to dig and read hundreds of pages of mind numbing rules and agreements, it is there and it is proven.

An introduction to acronyms is necessary. The players involved in the proposed National Animal Identification System being pushed by the USDA, and to be managed by APHIS (Animal Plant Health Inspection Service) are varied. First there is the WTO (World Trade Organization) which reached an agreement amongst participating countries several years ago in Uruguay called the SPS (Sanitary and Phytosanitary) and TBT (Technical Barriers to Trade) agreements.

In laymen's terms what the SPS agreement says is that each member country can make regulations that must be met by other member countries in order to trade in agricultural goods with each other. These regulations must be in the interest of protecting the country making the regulations from disease, pests, or perceived health dangers. Countries making regulations cannot impose more strict regulations on importer nations than they do on their own nation.

Then there was the TBT (Technical Barriers to Trade) agreement made at the same time in Uruguay. What that says is that developed countries must help less developed countries to advance technologically to be able to participate in trade with other member countries. Developed countries cannot require more than a country is able to achieve and the developed countries need to help the less developed countries to meet their own criteria through funding and other assistance.

Then there is the OIE (Office Internacional Epizooities) or World Animal Health Organization, which although it is independent of the UN in origin works very closely with both the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) and Codex Alimentarius which is a child of the UN and FAO. Codex can be best understood as being the global FDA and OIE as the global USDA. The Untied States of America has membership in both the OIE and the UN and therefore Codex.

The OIE has authority over all member nations veterinary services. Most of the OIE rules are rather innocuous, however they have become increasingly involved in issues directly relating to trade since the advent of the WTO in 1994. OIE has also been increasingly involved with Codex and are working in concert on nearly everything at this time. Of particular importance to the subject of the NAIS (National Animal Identification System) is the issue of 'traceability/product tracing' and 'good farming practices'.

The OIE has a publication available on line called the "Terrestrial Animal Health Standards Commission" which is absolutely loaded with information regarding "traceability/product tracing" and Codex standards on the subject.

On page 41 of the TAHSC (Terrestrial Animal Health Standards Commission) it states that there is a critical relationship between animal identification and the traceability of animal products and that animal identification and traceability are "key tools for animal health, including zoonoses (diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans), and food safety", as well as "incidents, vaccination programmes, herd/flock management, zoning/compartmentalization, surveillance, early response and notification systems, animal movement controls, and health measures to facilitate trade."

Also worth noting from page 41 is the following paragraph:

"The Competent Authority in partnership with relevant government agencies and the private sector should establish a legal framework for the implementation and enforcement of animal identification and animal traceability in the country. In order to facilitate compatibility and consistency, relevant international standards and obligations should be taken into account. This legal framework should include elements such as the objectives, scope, organizational agreements including the choice of technologies used for identification and registration, obligation of the parties, confidentiality, accessibility issues and the efficient exchange of information."

In Appendix XXXIV of the Terrestrial Animal Health Standards document it states that VS (veterinary services) are the "Competent Authority" for animal identification and traceability in all member countries. It also does such fun things as role the words "animal identification system" into the word "animal identification" so that the smaller term may legally be referred to meaning an entire national or international system.

The European Union has made no real secret of the fact that their animal identification requirements are in line with both Codex and the OIE. It is my understanding that RFID will also be a mandatory requirement in the EU in January of 2008. There are a few catch phrases that have become fairly common stemming from the mandates of Codex, such as "farm to fork" traceability and "from stable to table", that leave no doubt of the identity of the progenitors of the US National Animal Identification System. The USDA and the OIE and Codex as well as the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) state that this is consumer driven.

While there may be a desire on the part of consumers to know the conditions under which their food was raised, the conditions which spark that desire are not conditions caused by small or medium sized agricultural endeavors, or even large privately owned operations. The corporate ag companies with their disregard for life and use of chemicals, antibiotics and hormones to improve their bottom line are responsible for the lack of confidence felt by those who cannot raise their own food. Yet the net effect of this program will be much higher cost for food and a loss of choice for the consumer as smaller farmers will be driven out of business by the costs of compliance and loss of production time because of the increase in paperwork and reporting needs as well as the many millions who will not be able to comply with the system because of deeply held religious convictions or aversions to the loss of freedom necessitated by the monitoring and surveillance implicit in this program.

As a matter of fact, corporate ag will be one of the few beneficiaries of this system because they will be allowed to tag their animals as groups or lots under only one tag per group/lot whereas those who practice more natural forms of animal rearing will need to tag each and every animal born at additional cost with additional reporting time. Reports may also be required on what is being fed to the stock as 'assurance' schemes are repeatedly referred to in both OIE and Codex guidelines.

On page 37 of theTAHSC (Terrestrial Animal Health Standards Commission document referred to above) there is a clear and indisputable tie to the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 which passed into law and is enforced by the FDA in the United States. The Bioterrorism Act of 2002 is the Act which is requiring that hay producers in the US register their premises and report who drove the truck, which field it was from, who worked on the harvesting of the hay and to whom the hay was sold. A quote from the TAHSC document showing the clear link follows:

"…the Task Force on Animal Feeding (May 2004) agreed to add a footnote to the title of Section 4.3 "Traceability/Product Tracing and Record keeping of Feed and Feed Ingredients" to indicate the definition developed by the Codex committee on General Principles applied to the Code (Terrestrial Animal Health Code, of the OIE) as appropriate…..the prompt trace-back of feed and feed ingredients should be to the immediate previous source and trace forward should be to the next subsequent recipients."


Throughout these documents are references to harmonization of identification and traceability methods and standards. In one document by Perry, harmonization is defined as, "the establishment, recognition and application of common sanitary and phyto sanitary measures by different Members." The United States is a "Member" so the directions following harmonization apply to the US. For food safety, (feed included) we must refer to Codex, for animal health the authority goes to the OIE. In the World Trade Organization documents regarding the SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary agreement) and the TBT (technical barriers to trade agreement) it is recommended that any disputes be mediated by the OIE or Codex.

It is abundantly clear that through these international entanglements our officials are both legislating and regulating our God given and Constitutionally guaranteed rights away. In the name of international trade and globalization these officials have agreed to implement a plan that is destructive to our nation's existence, as well as our freedom to feed ourselves without intense surveillance.

As a nation we must ask ourselves, is our freedom for sale in the global market? Is selling beef to Japan important enough to throw our Constitution and our children's future into the trash can? Can we not support ourselves agriculturally with the excellent controls we already have in place? Is your freedom worth more than all the bananas you may eat? To quote Patrick Henry, "Is life so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me,___________________________. I hope you can fill in the blank. **

** You may forward this or reprint it so long as you keep it in it's entirety and don't change anything. Thanks!

Where's the Beef?

Where's the Beef?


The National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the American Farm Bureau Federation along with the House Ag Committee Chair Collin Petersen (D-MN) seem to think that we must "preserve our export markets" by trading our real liberty for other nation's false sense of security through mass registration of our livestock and property under the National Animal Identification System or NAIS. It's common for beef magazines to lament about the new "voluntary" approach to the NAIS as being harmful to our economy.

Finding this an interesting argument, I decided to research the actual numbers to find out the truth of the importance and value of our beef export market.

Oddly enough, what I found out first was that the USDA does not publish all pertinent information in a single document that jibes with other documents. They also don't publish the information necessary to ascertain solid facts about import/export in an apple to apple comparison, but consistently compare apples to oranges. For instance, one report on exports will address the amount of beef imported in millions of tons with no indication of whether this is live weight, carcass weight, or dressed weight, and then the amount of exported beef will be given in dollar amounts. After digging extensively through USDA documents this shouldn't come as any kind of a surprise, but it certainly is an aggravation. In order to be terrifically generous to the USDA , I decided to simply address all weights as dressed beef based on an average dress out of 770 pounds per carcass which seemed to be a fairly agreed upon average between industry magazines and university studies as well as government reports. So let's count the cattle.

In 2005, the consumption of beef in the United States was 27.8 billion pounds. This breaks down to 36,103,896.1 or 36.1 million head. The total poundage of imported meat from all sources was given in one report as 6.6 million tons, another report as 6.2 million tons and yet another as 4.8 million tons. Which was it? Who knows? The USDA obviously doesn't… which raises some terrifically interesting questions that may be addressed in other articles, but for our purposes we'll just use the average so we can't be accused of being unfair.

So imported beef is roughly 5.8 million tons (give or take a few million head depending on the stats) or11.6 billion pounds for 2005. That breaks down to over 15 million head of cattle.

Surprisingly, the revered export market had the same stats in many places. That is 272,000 tons of beef translating into 706,493 head.

Doing the math then, we find that for less than 2 percent of our total consumption we are told we must "get with the rest of the world" and implement an onerous program that will drive small farmers out of business and consolidate the production of food to corporate growers.

Even more incredibly, we are only producing 56% of the beef we consume including the paltry amount we export. So we have a 44% shortfall in production, which means we should be raising another 15.7 million head before we even think about exporting the first cow!

Other statistics indicate that 66% of our cattle herds have less than fifty cattle. Some say 80%, but never mind that, we'll stick with the most accepted percentage. For a herd of 50 cows it would cost $34.52 per cow to get into the NAIS system, or $1726. That is assuming that a laptop can be purchased for $123, which would be a wonder. I don't think I'd want that laptop myself. When you take into account that the average age of the cattle grower is nearing 60 years of age (55.3 nationwide) you have to wonder if people will want to jump through all these hoops just to keep making a few dollars a year. Now, let's have a little more fun with numbers and look to the 2002 Ag Census for some info.

In the 2002 Census, it shows that we have over 1,018,359 farms that produce cattle. Yet the USDA adjusted their estimate of the number of premises down from 2.1 million to 1.4 million last fall. Intriguing, isn't it? Busting out the calculator again, if you add the total number of farms with less than 50 head of cattle you come up with 671,425 farms. Presuming those with less than fifty head won't find the idea of coughing up $1700 in order to keep their cows a financially brilliant move, many would probably quit. It's way too much of a headache with all the reporting and such. If those farmers bail, taking their thirty percent of the beef production with them, it means we would need to import an additional 10.8 million head. Hmm. If they all stayed in business, that 10.8 million head would translate into $372.8 million for the identification and technology companies. Finally, we see that someone will benefit from this system!

If USDA statistics are trustworthy, and we actually have 1.4 million premises that should be registered under the NAIS, then every sale barn, vet clinic, livestock hauler and backyard chicken raiser must grow another 11.26 head of cattle in order to meet our consumption. So the next time someone tells you we must preserve our export market, you should probably slap 'em upside the head.*******

sources:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/news/BSECoverage.htm
www.calbeef.org/index/pdf/About%20the%20Beef%20Business.pdf

ffas.usda.gov/dlp2/circular/2004/04-10LP/beefoverview.pdf

www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/aginfo/lsmkt/docs/mon111805.pdf
http://beef-mag.com/mag/beef_bigger_cheaper/
stlouisfed.org/publications/re/2007/a/pages/nais.html - 21k -
http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/land/pubs/livestockfarm.html

http://www.nass.usda.gov/census/census02/volume1/us/index2.htm



http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:W_QXpkGbStsJ:www.beef.org/uDocs/Econ%2520Impact%2520Beef%2520v2.doc+percent+production+herds+less+than+50+head&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=15&gl=us


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A Handicapped Analysis of the Costs of NAIS

A Handicapped Analysis of the Costs of NAIS

Doreen Hannes


Since it is obvious that the proposed NAIS (National Animal Identification System) is going to be quite costly to producers I have decided to do some research to try to figure out the probable costs to a smallish homestead. There are no actual figures available from the USDA, so it hampers things a bit. One of the more interesting things I have found is that nowhere in the world is such an elaborate system as the one proposed by the USDA actually in place. As a matter of fact, USDA Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Johanns has spoken the full truth when he said in the implementation plan teleconference in April of 2006:

"My point is this, and I think I've made it before. It isn't timing relative to administration; it isn't timing relative to politics. It's timing relative to a very, very huge undertaking. I said recently that nothing this big has been undertaken anywhere in the world………."

The truth is, other countries generally have much less intensive reporting requirements and significantly fewer species involved in their identification schemes. In the EU they employ a passport system with the RFID (radio frequency identification device)in the document, and tagging in at least the cattle's ears. Yet their reporting requirements are very similar to those the USDA wants to require and there are more species involved than in the Aussie system which presently only covers cattle. In the EU they require these passports for cattle, swine, sheep and horses. The figures used here are all in the British system and I simply converted pounds to dollars so it would be more understandable to Americans. Proposed costs were $13.25-$18.90 (that's 7-10 pounds) per animal and actual reported costs are between $37.86-$94.66 (or 20 and 50 pounds) per head. Since the USDA Secretary of Agriculture and research verifies that our system is going to be more complicated than any other nation's systems, the base I will use for my costs are going to be the one's available in UK documents. It seems logical that a more complex system would actually have higher costs than a more simple system, but to avoid arguments, I am using the actual figures I could find. Poultry is not required in the British system, but the lowest cost per animal appears to be 20 pounds. I readily grant that it is subjective, but since there has been no cost analysis done, and the touted $3 tag cost is for the tag and not the program, I've had to pull from places that actually have a program and costs available for that program.

So now let's imagine you have a small farm with some milk goats, chickens and guinea fowl, a couple of horses for pleasure and a couple of bottle calves for your children to raise for their spending money and one for your own consumption. This is an extremely common scenario amongst homes where people want to provide their own food to some degree and desire to live a 'simple' life in which their children can be raised with good food and an understanding of taking good care of things so they will work together and are beneficial to each other. So much for sensibilities.

The NAIS arrives on the scene and you have decided that you will try your best to comply with the new regulations. First, you must secure your license to farm, or premise identification number. This is issued by the state and because you didn't volunteer early and the program has now become mandatory with enforcement, the price is $10 per year.

You have six milk goats who kid once per year. You have always used a neighbor's buck for breeding purposes so thankfully you don't have to register him. There are 12 chickens at present, but two are setting on clutches and they are due to hatch out in two weeks. The last time you were able to get a count on those guineas you had 10 of them, but today you only saw seven while you were doing morning chores. Maybe they are setting on eggs as well? Uh-oh. The three calves are still where they are supposed to be, so all is well with them, but you don't have a head gate, so you have called the vet out to help with them and the horses.

Thus far you have purchased all the AIN tags you will need (kinda worried about those guineas though!), the "data accumulator" or in English, a laptop computer($1200) which you will keep in the barn so you can record all vaccinations and medications administered, and the handheld wand ($450) and the cords ($40) required to ensure you don't make a number transposition on those 15 digit tags, the software you have was provided free for a thirty day trial period, and you are now ready to become NAIS compliant.

The tag costs are higher than they said they would be because of the agencies that had to be employed to keep track of all the tags. The company you bought the tags from includes free entry into the database for the animal with purchase of their tags, so you saved the 30¢ fee on each of those reports. The cost for each identification device is $37.86 on the goats, cattle and even (gulp!) the poultry! This is because as the documents repeatedly state, the system must be uniform. Horses are higher because they are considered to be luxury animals, so the cost for them is $47.70.

The cost for the poultry is just insane, and you have decided that you're just going to do this batch and forget any more registrations. I mean heck, $832.92 for the birds is foolishness! But they do keep the ticks and grasshoppers down making it possible for you to have a garden and your dogs can come in the house without ticks all over them. Also the eggs from the chickens are so much better than the ones from the store that you have justified the expense through looking into cholesterol studies and protein assimilation studies over the internet (on that new laptop you had to pay $1200 for so you could be in compliance) and you just know one day you'll be short of eggs while cooking and the 20 mile one way trip to the store is a major expense with gas at $4 per gallon now. Catching those guineas is a major concern as well. But if you don't and someone reports you it is $1,000 per day fine, so you bit the bullet and ordered the tags for them anyway.

The goats definitely seem to justify the expense more. They give you both milk and cheese and let the kids raise up those calves so they can buy some of the things they are in an endless state of 'dying to have.' The goats only cost you $226.92 and you figure they can eat a little less and be just fine anyway. The calves cost $113.58 and you are hoping prices hold out until they are ready to sell as that should help you with the costs of the goats and chickens….fingers crossed on this thought!!!

The horses. Oh boy. The whole family got together and decided the horses simply had to stay even though they aren't putting any food on the table because we might just need them to be able to go to town with the way the gas prices are going up and the new war in the middle east keeps worsening on a daily basis. It's cheaper to feed the horse than the car, so it was unanimous. Besides, the price horses brought had plummeted because of the system getting close to mandatory and you waited too long to sell. So the horses cost $95.40, so long as you don't ride them….Reporting their movements is 30¢ every time you take them off the property and 30¢ every time you bring them back. The horses seem to be some kind of insurance on the hoof, plus they sure are nice to look at in the morning.

Thus far you have spent at total of $2,968.82 to be compliant with the NAIS. Of course you had to put all this on a credit card as you only make $20,000 per year, so somewhere in the figuring you will need to remember the interest rate of 15.8 percent, but that seems trivial and not even worth considering if you think about the national debt for half a second. Anyway, there are things to do and the vet should be here to put the chips in the horses and cows with his portable squeeze gate in about an hour. Usually he charges $55 to come out for a visit to the farm based on a two hour visit tops, but the office girl informed you he was having to charge a bit more due to all the extra reporting now.

As you eat breakfast while waiting for the vet to come and musing over how on earth you are going to keep from going bankrupt, the local radio station reports that the area sale barn has upped it's commission charge from $12 per head to $35 because it has to run so many cattle through again due to the poor read rates. Oh bother. In defense of the sale barn, the fines for not having the farm of origin recorded correctly can get up to $500 per offense, so they have to watch their errors very closely.

The vet arrives and you get the portable squeeze gate into the calf pasture and coax them with a bottle into the thing even though they are waaaay past weaning age. You've just been trying to get them to grow as much as possible to help pay for things. You've decided that this year you will sell the calf to someone else for beef and just hope that the imported meat at the supermarket doesn't get above $6 per pound.

The calf tagging goes pretty well and you get the tags entered into your wand without difficulty. Now you head on to the horses. The gelding goes into the chute without trouble and the chip is inserted into his neck with only two attempts by the vet. You get that entry into the wand as well and are actually starting to think this is pretty cool. Then the mare goes in. She is not a happy camper. Holding her head still should be some kind of an Olympic or extreme sports event and that hand is really going to swell up on you in a little while. After what seems like forever the vet gets the chip in her neck. When you go to read it with your wand she flips her head and smashes the wand into the side of the squeeze chute, and the blasted thing busts into pieces all over the ground and the portable chute. Super glue ain't gonna fix it. You've only got one week until the entire system is mandatory with enforcement and you still have all those dang birds and goats to implant and band!!!

Since you've known your vet for years he has some empathy for you and says he'd be happy to help you tag the other animals so you can just enter everything into his wand and still get it uploaded to the proper databases before the fines set in on you. Just then, one of the dad burned guineas comes out of the brush with heaven only knows how many keets in tow!!! You don't have the tags for those keets. Awwww nuts!!! Plus the vet is there and he is required by law to report any sightings of untagged animals. That's $1,000 per event in fines to you or the loss of his license if he fails to do so! Man. There were at least 10 keets although you are sure there will only be six tomorrow.

Right now you want to quit. Doc says "Hey, don't worry about it, you still have a whole week to get it all done and I have ten tags for poultry right on my truck." He's a real helpful sort. After he scans the mare who is still in the chute you let her loose and load the gelding back in for scanning. Now it's back to the calf pasture to re-scan those boys. It takes 30 minutes to get them back in the chute because they are so full they can't be easily coaxed with the bottle any longer.

Next you go to do the goats as you have decided that there is no way to get the wand in time to avoid fines, and you know your vet is a nice guy but fears for his job if he is proven to not enforce this system properly. The girls behave quite well while the microchip is inserted into their tail webs. They definitely deserve a treat.

The chickens are all in the yard so it only takes 25 minutes or so to get the id bands on them. The vet notices the clutches under the two hens and asks how many tags you think you'll need for the imminent chicks. When you say you'll just get in touch with him when they hatch out he gives you a 'look'. Oh boy. So much for mister nice guy.

It's time to move onto the guineas. Too bad the 12 year old boy is in school as he's really fast and actually stands a chance at getting a few of them. Since you know you were missing three adults yesterday you decide to go back to the brush in the horse pasture first. Bingo!!! Two more guineas are in there setting on clutches. Drat. You get one of the hens and get the band on her but the other one takes off and actually abandons her nest rather than giving herself up. It breaks your heart, but rather than spend several hundred more on tags since you know the vet will be back after 'the look' in the chicken coop you squash the nearly hatched out keets in their shells. After trying for a good half hour to get the rest of the guineas the vet just decides to leave you with the tags and you can call him to come back and scan them when you've got them all penned up. You tell him that you don't have any pen that will keep the guineas inside….All you have is the chicken coop and they flat fly over the yard for the chickens. He assures you that he's sure you can get it worked out, after all those fines are too high to chance getting any just over the lack of a completely enclosed pen for the guineas. He's absolutely right.

Since your momma didn't raise any fools you invite him in for coffee before he hands you the bill for the morning's events. He starts writing the durn thing up while you still fixing his coffee!! That isn't good. As you set the coffee down on the table you invite him to have some of the fresh coffee cake setting right in front of him still slightly warm from the oven. After you've chatted a bit about the weather and such trivialities for 10 minutes he slides the bill over to you and you spew coffee out of your mouth across the table and all over the fresh coffee cake. Guess he won't have any after all. It's $110 for his time, $5 per each application $3 for each read (including uploads into the meta data system…thank heavens!) and $378.60 for the ten extra tags for the keets….next to that he wrote (chickens, too) letting you know he's definitely cutting you some slack. That's a tidy sum of $680.60. Not bad for a morning's work at all.

Your smallish farm total is now up to a sum of $3,649.42 and you still have to buy that new dadgum wand again. Obviously this system is affordable and worth every penny.

The End…….



***Remember that this system is more complex than any other and no costs are available to really judge costs with except for the actual hardware necessary for the 'data accumulation and transfers'. The USAIO said in an article in the spring of '06 that they anticipate charging 30¢ per entry into the repository. All government programs usually stay under budget as we know. Tongue is firmly planted in cheek with that comment.

Emerson NAIS Bill back in Play

The National Animal Identification System is the thing I have reluctantly become an expert in over the course of the past two years. It is what I will most often post about. The program should concern everyone who eats. The most brief explanation of it is that it is a three part program requiring premise identification; a seven digit number linked to GPS coordinates of any place that houses or holds animals of twenty nine species from clams to cattle. Then requires one of two types of electronic identification devices on the animals, the AIN or GIN; the AIN is an individual animal assignation consisting of 15 digits including the 3 digit country code (840 in the US) for animals that are raised with animals of different ages or from different farms of origin, GIN is a 13 digit number with the country code for animals typically raised from birth to slaughter in groups like broiler chickens or clams. The final component is animal tracking which is the report within 24 hours of any "event" involving any of the animals covered. Events are such things as visits to the vet, sale of the animal, movement of the animal, vaccinations and medications, death, slaughter, loss of animal or tag, malfunctioning tag, application of tag, or sighting of animal.

This is the death knell for rural America, private property rights and even civilization as we know it. That may sound over the top, but consider for a moment that civilization is based on agriculture. Civility exists only in times of plenty brought about by the production of more than is necessary for basic survival. Hungry people do not remain civil for long. Currently, in the US, less than 2% of the populace are involved in agriculture. This is down from 25% in the 1950's.

Last month JoAnn Emerson, my esteemed Congressional Representative, introduced the Talent/Emerson legislation again and picked up four sponsors this time. It's now HR1018, and is co sponsored by Paul, Duncan, and Boozman. I think she really believes the legislation is a good idea, but it is a mess.

At a minimum there are three things that must be amended in order to make the bill anything other than fully horrible. First, premise identification must be specifically precluded from being required for services of any variety, be it access to traditional marketing venues, veterinary services or purchase of feed. Secondly, federal funding of any mandatory state programs on any level must be restricted. Also, voluntary needs to be defined. Or barring that, provision must be made to allow people to withdraw and have their information fully expunged from the database at no expense to themselves.

Here is the bill...

HR 1018 IH
110th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 1018

To amend the Animal Health Protection Act to prohibit the Secretary of Agriculture from implementing or carrying out a National Animal Identification System or similar requirement and to require the Secretary to protect information obtained as part of any voluntary animal identification system.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

February 13, 2007

Mrs. EMERSON (for herself, Mr. BOOZMAN, Mr. PAUL, and Mr. DUNCAN) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Agriculture

A BILL

To amend the Animal Health Protection Act to prohibit the Secretary of Agriculture from implementing or carrying out a National Animal Identification System or similar requirement and to require the Secretary to protect information obtained as part of any voluntary animal identification system.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. PROHIBITION ON MANDATORY ANIMAL IDENTIFICATION PROGRAM.

Section 10409 of the Animal Health Protection Act (7 U.S.C. 8308) is amended by adding at the end the following:
`(c) Prohibition on Mandatory Animal Identification Program- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary shall not implement or carry out, and no Federal funds shall be used to implement or carry out, a National Animal Identification System, or similar requirement, that mandates the participation of livestock owners.’.
SEC. 2. PROTECTION OF INFORMATION IN A VOLUNTARY ANIMAL IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM.

Section 10409 of the Animal Health Protection Act (7 U.S.C. 8308) (as amended by section 1) is amended by adding at the end the following:
`(d) Protection of Information in a Voluntary Animal Identification System-
`(1) DEFINITION OF ANIMAL IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM- In this subsection, the term `animal identification system’ means a voluntary system for identifying or tracing animals that is established by the Secretary.
`(2) PROTECTION FROM DISCLOSURE-
`(A) IN GENERAL- Information obtained through the animal identification system shall not be disclosed except as provided in this subsection.
`(B) WAIVER OF PRIVILEGE OR PROTECTION- The provision of information to the animal identification system and the disclosure of information in accordance with this subsection shall not constitute a waiver of any applicable privilege or protection under Federal law, including trade secret protection.
`(3) LIMITED RELEASE OF INFORMATION- The Secretary may disclose information obtained through the animal identification system if–
`(A) the Secretary determines that livestock may be threatened by a disease or pest;
`(B) the release of the information is related to actions the Secretary is authorized to take under this subtitle; and
`(C) the Secretary determines that the disclosure of the information to a government entity or person is necessary to assist the Secretary in carrying out the purposes of–
`(i) this subtitle; and
`(ii) the animal identification system.
`(4) MANDATORY DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION- The Secretary shall disclose information obtained through the animal identification system regarding particular animals to–
`(A) the person who owns or controls the animals, if the person requests the information in writing;
`(B) the Attorney General for the purpose of law enforcement;
`(C) the Secretary of Homeland Security for the purpose of homeland security;
`(D) the Secretary of Health and Human Services for the purpose of protecting the public health;
`(E) an entity pursuant to an order of a court of competent jurisdiction; and
`(F) the government of a foreign country if disclosure of the information is necessary to trace animals that pose a disease or pest threat to livestock or a danger to human health, as determined by the Secretary.
`(5) PROHIBITION ON DISCLOSURE UNDER STATE OR LOCAL LAW- Any information relating to animal identification that a State or local government obtains from the Secretary shall not be made available by the State or local government pursuant to State or local law requiring disclosure of information or records to the public.’.

Patience with the Process

After creating a blog and failing to post to it immediately, I had to create another blog as it wouldn't allow me to post to the first one I created. I find technology to be rather infuriating. I'm much more of a duct tape and hammers type of person than the hacker my son seems to think I could be simply because I can type fairly quickly.

My hope is to be able to convey both information and insight into the topics I post on here. My main concern is what is happening to the country I so dearly love and the mechanisms involved in it's destruction, or perhaps more appropriately, dissolution. Why? Because despite the cynicism that develops as an adjunct of knowledge, it is the idealist that brings change through adherence to principles and morals. There is an order and beauty to the world that God Almighty created, and without recognition of His authority and design parameters we are swinging blindly at problems we don't fully comprehend. In other words, we just think we're smart, but we are really no better than kids trying to open the pinata.

Please be patient with me as I try to flounder through the technological handicaps I possess as I learn this system. And thank you for stopping by.........