[ SHOWGSD-L ] OT- SMALL FARMS, PET OWNERS TARGETED
- From: "Ginger Cleary" <cleary1414@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Showgsd-L@Freelists. Org" <showgsd-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2006 13:09:05 -0400
-----Original Message-----
http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/hanchette211.html
MOUNTAIN VIEWS: By John Hanchette
OLEAN -- Fine. I admit it. I'm not as quick or as smart or as knowledgeable
as I used to be.
Until I wrote last week about the unconscionable and continuing slaughter of
American horses for foreign food due to the United States Department of
Agriculture's stubborn flouting of congressional intent, this city slicker
had never even heard of the latest boneheaded bureaucratic plan now brewing
at USDA.
In line with the federal government's penchant for alphabet designations,
this intricate little brainstorm is called the NAIS -- innocent-sounding
enough until you learn that it turns 230 years of national tradition,
agricultural enterprise, domestic security, individual property rights,
adherence to the Constitution and American privacy rights upside down.
NAIS stands for National Animal Identification System. It might turn into
NBC, the Next Big Controversy.
The huge federal cabinet agency has already spent $85 million trying to
develop NAIS.
If put in place, it would require every premises in the nation that houses
even a single chicken, duck, turkey, cow, bison, deer, elk, ostrich, game
bird, goose, pig, goat, sheep, horse or any other animal considered to be
livestock (or fit for human consumption) to be registered in a computerized
government database, assigned a unique seven-digit number and given a listed
GPS (global positioning system, aided by satellite navigation) coordinate.
Such properties would be subject to unannounced federal or state
agricultural inspections at any time, no search warrants necessary. The
owner of the premises likely would be charged a fee for this "registration."
The next step would require each and every animal, individually, to be
tagged with a radio frequency identification device, or microchipped -- like
veterinarians now do to allow tracking of missing pets. Each animal would
get a 15-digit ID number. The owner of the premises would probably be
charged for installation of these nifty little gizmos.
Then, movement of the tagged animal from the registered premises -- any
movement whatsoever -- would have to be reported to the USDA or a similar
state agency within 24 hours. No exceptions. None.
If NAIS goes into effect, even parakeets and canaries -- any kind of "exotic
fowl" under federal definition -- would probably come from the pet store
with a microchip ID device.
Think of some scenarios.
Kindly grandma gives her poor elderly neighbor a chicken for the stew pot
from the half dozen she keeps, mostly as a reminder of her youth on the
farm. Gotta report it, grandma.
Little Billy takes his well-groomed calf to the county fair, wins a blue
ribbon, then returns home. Gotta tell the feds, Billy.
Stockbroker George likes to ride horseback on weekends, so he bought an old
circus horse and keeps it stabled outside of town. This Saturday, a nice
trail ride is scheduled in a nearby state park. Law-abiding stockbroker
George will co-mingle his horse with other mounts, so he'll have to tell the
federal or state record keepers about his trail ride.
Little Jennifer transports the handsome turkey she has raised to the
pre-Thanksgiving meeting of the local 4H Club to show off for her annual
project. Then she takes the big, beautiful bird back home. Uh oh, aren't you
forgetting something, Jenny? That's right, you've got to notify the USDA
before you go to school tomorrow.
"This program will devastate county fairs, and 4H, and Future Farmers of
America projects," said Texan Randy Givens, one of the founders of the
Liberty Ark Coalition, a national group recently formed to keep American
farms from "unnecessary government intrusion."
Givens, quoted on the excellent Web site www.eco.freedom.org, notes another
likely unanticipated fallout from this scheme: "It will kill the rodeo
circuit. These programs have been successful for generations. The NAIS will
wipe them out because it is simply not worth the effort, or cost, to registe
r, tag, and report every animal that moves to a show or a county fair, or to
a rodeo."
There is no federal statute, as yet, that authorizes such electronic
tracking of individual animals. The two or three bills that contained such
language and were introduced in the previous session of Congress languished
in committee.
The USDA on its own Web site lists NAIS as "currently a volunteer program,"
but quickly gathering opponents believe this term is designed to lull into
complacency those it would affect.
"The (NAIS) program would be enforced, possibly with fines and even criminal
penalties," insists another founder of the Liberty Ark Coalition, Ohio
attorney Karin Bergener. "The USDA has said that the program is currently
voluntary, but if 100 percent of all farmers don't volunteer to participate,
USDA will make it mandatory."
The USDA insisted as recently last week -- to the Wall Street Journal --
that it never was totally committed to mandatory participation, and for
about a year now has been leaning toward a voluntary system, administered
for enforcement through various state agriculture departments. Some big farm
states, such as Minnesota and Wisconsin, have already set up advanced
premises registration programs.
But as one scrolls farther down the USDA Web site, one discovers the huge
federal agency still admitting in typical bureaucratese that "the draft
strategic plan references mandatory requirements in 2008 and beyond."
In the meantime, USDA has taken "a phased-in approach to implementation" and
assigned its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to publish updates
on the establishment of NAIS as a working program. And USDA has a good leg
up on making all this happen. The agency has already registered for GPS, on
a voluntary basis, about 270,500 "agricultural premises" nationwide --
roughly 18 percent of the total farms or livestock-harboring locations in
the country.
"If it isn't mandatory, it simply will not work," Bobby Acord, head of the
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service until two years ago, and now a
consultant to the National Pork Producers Council, warned in the Wall Street
Journal in June.
So, how did all this get started?
Mad cow disease. Then, Big Health and Big Food entered the fray.
Mad cow -- or bovine spongiform encephalopathy -- spreads from cow to cow
via contaminated feed. Most scientists believe humans can get the
brain-wasting illness from eating infected beef and can die from it. The
disease became lodged in the typical American consciousness in the 1990s. In
the last decade or so, about 150 humans have died from it, none of them from
meat linked to the United States.
In late 2003, the first American cow was identified with the infection, and
the Ag Department went bonkers, pledging to quickly develop a national
tracking system. A couple of others have been found with mad cow since, the
most recent one a beef cow in Alabama that tested positive three months ago.
Despite visiting three dozen farms and five auction houses in that state,
the USDA couldn't even discover where the Alabama cow was born or what
happened to its possibly vulnerable herd mates.
The idea of a national food-animal tracking system also gained crucial
momentum when the near-panic over avian flu occurred last fall and winter,
despite the lack of proven human-to-human transmission or discovery in the
United States. If human-to-human bird flu contagion ever evolves, tracking
poultry movement will have very little to do with the outcome.
The idea of a national animal ID system, set up electronically, goes back to
the early 1990s, when new data-storing technology companies were pushing
their wares. In 2002, the National Institute for Animal Agriculture -- which
sounds like an educational group, or think tank, or public interest
organization -- proposed the actual NAIS that USDA is working on today. But
the NIAA is anything but an academic or public affairs organization. Its
membership is filled with huge agribiz companies and suppliers -- Cargill,
Tyson, Monsanto, the National Pork Producers Council, etc.
They had NAIS on the road before the first case of mad cow infection was
discovered in the United States. So much of Big Agribiz loves this idea --
in the same fashion that big restaurant chains quietly supported and lobbied
for the late-night passage of New York state's no smoking-in-eateries act
here. Big chains could take the hit of smokers staying away, but mom-and-pop
restaurants couldn't, because smokers at the bar provided their profit
margin. They've been folding ever since.
It's the same with the big meat and poultry producers. Most of them have
industry representatives on the "working groups" USDA has established to
develop the NAIS plans. If the costs of maintaining a huge federal tracking
database fall upon the shoulders of small farmers and family producers,
they'll probably just go out of business. Score one for the big guys.
Another argument being advanced for NAIS is that in this day of
globalization, big beef exporters need to be able to point to their meat
product's pedigree -- where it came from, how it was handled, whether it was
exposed to anything. Australia is already selling us beef with tracking
system credentials. Phooey, say the NAIS opponents, this is Big Business
hand-in-hand with Big Government.
"Only a handful of large companies will profit from the export market,"
writes Judith McGeary, an Austin, Texas, commercial litigation attorney who
is executive director of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, a national
group fighting NAIS. "Meanwhile, the costs of the program will drive small
producers out of business, enabling large companies to increase their
control of agriculture and contributing to higher prices for consumers as
competition is eliminated."
Gee. You don't think the big beef companies could have thought of that
already, do you? Surely not.
McGeary also notes that most food-borne illnesses are from bacteria and
viruses that contaminate food due to "poor practices at slaughterhouses" or
in subsequent food-handling. "NAIS will do nothing to protect against these
problems," she points out. "The tracking ends at the time of slaughter, so
it will not add to the government's ability to trace contaminated meats once
they are in the food chain. ... If we want to address disease, we need to
address the causes of disease in the large commercial facilities, not
unnecessarily burden our small and medium-size farmers and ranchers."
Many farm activists and animal groups believe the federal NAIS movement is
simply designed to make it easier to conduct wholesale killings of suspected
disease carriers -- like the British did in unnecessarily torching whole
herds of cattle when mad cow broke out in the 1990s on that sceptered isle,
instead of using existing technologies to track down the susceptible
individual cows and steers through DNA blood markers. It's easier. Why do
the work? Besides, the animals all look alike, don't they? That's what
happened in our Southwest in 2003 when the Exotic Newcastle Disease outbreak
occurred on several poultry farms -- a disease brought into the country by
way of illegal Mexican fighting roosters that the Border Patrol should have
nailed.
Terry Watt, an animal activist who still lives in Arizona, remembers the
draconian response of the federal government and believes the NAIS plan is
"to set them (farmers and animals) up for 'depopulation' should some sort of
disease show up in their region. ... The feds were 'depopulating' people's
backyard chickens and ducks without even testing for the disease. I was in a
quarantine area in Mohave County, Arizona, and believe me, no one wanted
anyone to know they even owned a pet parrot."
So, here's the root analysis against NAIS. The rationale for this huge
developing program is to protect against animal disease by providing quick
traceback of all animal movements. But as the Liberty Ark Coalition points
out in their formative document (www.libertyark.net), the primary flaw in
the federal thinking is that "the threat of disease cannot justify every
intrusion into our privacy and property rights. Disease, both human and
animal, has been part of our existence for millennia. The government's and
industry's attempt to use fear to deprive us of our rights is unacceptable."
The secondary flaw, says Liberty Ark, is that actually tagging and tracking
the animals -- all the animals -- "would dwarf any government program in
existence. The costs will roll downhill to the smallest producer and
individual animal owner. There are no provisions for USDA to offset the
staggering costs of this national program."
The USDA would answer that it is already picking up some of this cost
through grants for setting up NAIS reporting programs. Agriculture Secretary
Mike Johanns announced just two weeks ago that the USDA will soon award
$14.3 million to properly applying Indian tribal governments and various
state ag departments "to continue registering premises for the national
animal identification system."
I have three thoughts on all this:
1.. That's my taxpayer money you're using on this stupid, intrusive idea,
Mike, and I do not approve.
2.. If the federal government is now into microchipping chickens, how long
will it be before you and I, dear reader, will be wearing one?
3.. Where is George Orwell when we really need him?
----------------------------------------------------------
John Hanchette, a professor of journalism at St. Bonaventure University, is
a former editor of the Niagara Gazette and a Pulitzer Prize-winning national
correspondent. He was a founding editor of USA Today and was recently named
by Gannett as one of the Top 10 reporters of the past 25 years. He can be
contacted via e-mail at Hanchette6@xxxxxxxx
Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com July 3 2006
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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Ginger Cleary, Rome, GA
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the
most oppressive. C.S.Lewis
www.rihadin.com
My Ebay site
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