From A Sheltered Place-NAIS refugee

As an intro, one of the major pushers of NAIS is the Farm Bureau. This is from an individual who has sought to be invisible due to the mandated nature of NAIS in their prior dwelling......Volumes are said, and highly pertinent to the current destrcution of the smaller dairies right now..........

Farm Bureau sells out its national constituency.

Word came to us recently that the National Farm Bureau Federation (NFBF) is sending a postcard to their 3 million members polling them on their stance on the USDA’s proposed National Animal Identification System (NAIS). Members are to fill this card out and mail it appropriately.

NFBF could just as well have stapled a condom on that postcard. Farm Bureau claims to be the voice for the independent farmer, but they have been actively working for years to create a national animal identification system and a premises ID. In the early 90s, NFBF was instrumental in creating the National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA). The NIAA, in 1999, started working with the USDA for implementation for the tagging of livestock and the registering of premises into a national database. The mechanism for implementing this program is disease eradication programs. In Michigan, starting in 2005, the RFID tag and the registering of premises began with the TB eradication program the Michigan Department of Agriculture had started several years earlier. TB, a disease that is not highly contagious and of no threat to human health, is being used as an excuse to kill off healthy animals in the name of controlling a disease.

Over 100 million dollars has been spent to “depopulate” more than 40 herds of mostly healthy cattle in Michigan. Now the USDA has its sights set on brucellosis eradication in the Yellowstone region of the western United States, TB in the southwest—the result of cattle coming from Mexico, and any other “emerging” disease that they consider a threat to our food system.

I had the opportunity some years ago, as an unwitting member of Farm Bureau, to attend a Farm Bureau hosted regional meeting where the attendees were briefed on the new USDA farm program at that time. We listened to a doctor Ag Economy “expert” from Michigan State University explain how the USDA calculates target price for the loan deficiency payment for the political commodity program. After listening to his confusing, complex, explanation of how all this comes about, I raised the question, “Wouldn’t it be much simpler to go back to the Farm Program of 1948 and calculate farm prices with simple arithmetic, which would give farmers a much improved price so they would not have to borrow money to run their operations?” I do not recall the answer. But the President of Michigan Farm Bureau, Wayne Wood, who was sitting behind me, came up and talked to me afterwards. His family runs a large confinement dairy in the thumb of lower Michigan. He straight-faced told me to my face, that the American farmer cannot receive a price that he would like to have because of the law of supply and demand. There is too much production.

I took a step forward toward him and I said, “What about MPC, Milk Protein Concentrate, that is imported into this country by the large corporate processors, such as Kraft Corporation, that is used in the cheese vats so that the low quality, A-1 type milk that the large inefficient dairy Holstein cow produces will yield a higher volume of cheese?” –the type of cow that Wayne Wood has in his dairy barns. Mr. Wood looked down at his shoes, I think to check to make sure his shoe strings weren’t tied together so he wouldn’t trip when he stepped back from me, and he said, in a distressed tone, “We are looking into that.”

The industrial American Dairy Industry is going broke. The largest growth sector in the new food system is the small farm of 1 - 9 head of cattle and under $1000 in annual sales, an increase of over 63,000 such farms between 2002 and 2007.

According to the recently released data from the USDA’s 2007 ag census, the USDA’s numbers only represent those food producers who filled the survey out and sent it back. How many are there really? People are opting out of the industrial system and going directly to their neighbor or local farm market. Is NFBF going to support Congresswoman De Lauro's HR875 that has 36 co-sponsors, that sets up a Food Safety Administration? A new agency where the Administrator is given a blank check to regulate, control and license every “food production unit” with a million dollar a day fine for each offense for every day that you are not in compliance?

Maybe NFBF will send a postcard out to its constituency with two condoms stapled to the next postcard. Oh, by the way, the condom is new bailout mascot, the bailout for the failing corporate entity.

The condom allows for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you a sense of security while you are actually being screwed. However, the ones that Farm Bureau is sending out, if they take my suggestion, will have holes in them because of the staples.

Shame on you Farm Bureau, shame, shame, shame.



--Vigilance from a sheltered place.

p.s. You grab a wolf by the ears, good luck, you’re going to need it. You can’t control him and you don’t dare let him go.