Tag livestock to stop disease

A Wisconsin State Journal editorial. ^

[Calpernia]

Wisconsin has served as a model for the first step in developing a national livestock identification system. Now it's time for the state to set an example on step two.

That will require Wisconsin farmers to voluntarily participate in identification plans and to reject misdirected concerns that livestock identification is a Big Brother invasion of a farmer's liberty.

At stake is not farmers' freedoms but rather the ability to track and contain bird flu, mad-cow and other farm animal diseases. Also at stake is public health and Wisconsin's competitiveness in the global economy.

Wisconsin was the first state to require the registration of all places that keep livestock, including everything from chickens to horses to cows. More than 45,000 of the state's estimated 60,000 livestock locations have already registered. By later this year, through a phased process, it will be mandatory for all livestock operations to register with the Wisconsin Livestock Identification Consortium. Even hobby farms are covered by the law.

The U.S. Agriculture Department adopted Wisconsin's system as a model promoted to other states.

The identification of livestock farms is the foundation of state and national plans to respond to outbreaks of disease by tracking down infected animals and tracing the source of the disease.

Step two is the identification of individual animals. This week a privatecalled the U.S. Animal Identification Organization introduced a national animal tracking system in which individual farm animals would be tagged and entered into a database so each could be tracked from farm to farm and from farm to market. Participation by farmers will be voluntary.

The U.S. AIO identification system will not be the only such system. Instead, there are likely to be private and state systems that will use identification numbers provided by the U.S. Agriculture Department. The systems will be linked to allow tracking animals across systems.

Wisconsin plans its own state program of animal identification, following up the state's farm registration system. Farmers and agribusiness ought to endorse the plan, yet pockets of resistance exist.

Handfuls of farmers across the country are gearing up to oppose animal identification, claiming it is an unwarranted expense that intrudes on privacy and freedom. The claims are off-base. By helping to trace and control disease, animal identification protects farmers' interests in the value of their property, a safe food supply and foreign demand for U.S. meat.

In Wisconsin, officials and farmers should move to the second step of livestock identification with deliberate speed.

[Calpernia]

http://magic-city-news.com/article_5397.shtml

Are you familiar with NAIS? Let me give you a little background. The USDA wants to register the GPS coordinates, name, address, phone and other data on every farm, home and other location that has even has a single animal with a government Premise ID. For this privilege of mandatory registration you will pay a fee of $10 or more per year. Next they intend to tag every single one of your animals with a RFID or other tag. This will be mandatory. In addition to paying an annual fee and paying for tags for all of your animals, you would also be required to log, track and report all 'events' such as the birth of an animal, death of an animal, animals leaving or entering your property. All reports must be made within 24 hours or you could face stiff fines. Do not expect them to keep your private information secure. In a little "Oops" the USDA just released the social security numbers of 350,000 farmers.

Big producers like factory farms get to use a single batch ID for tens of thousands of animals to keep their costs down. For them NAIS is a minor bookkeeping entry that gives them big profits in the export markets to Japan and other countries. Small farmers and homesteaders with their mixed aged flocks and herds would be required to tag and track every single individual animal. NAIS is great for big corporate producers and hellish for small farmers and homesteaders. The cost of NAIS in fees, tags, equipment costs and time will bankrupt small farmers and overwhelm people who raise their own food animals. In the end, the consumer will pay - NAIS could add almost a thousand dollars a year to the annual food budget for the typical family of four. By destroying small producers NAIS will kill the Slow Food and the Buy Local movements, as local farmers are driven out of business.

NAIS is already mandatory in some states starting this year including Texas and Wisconsin. In other states, like Vermont, the agricultural commissioner and state vet

have said they will tag and track every animal right down to the back yard level. This means everyone, even granny with her one laying hen is going to have to get a $10 per year premise ID, a RFID tag for her chicken and make government reports on its movements. Texas has implemented a $1,000 per incident per day fine non-compliance. What small farmer or homesteader can stand up to that kind of fire power?!?

NAIS also requires tagging and tracking of pets and guardian animals including alpaca and horses. It may later likely be extended to cats and dogs although that has not yet been announced it is allowed for in the draft proposal through extensions of the program. In New York state they already have a bill in the legislature requiring that all dogs be internally tagged with RFID chips for tracking purposes.

USDA agents can come to your home and kill all of your livestock without a warrant or any legal appeal under NAIS. Once you are registered into the mandatory NAIS system you effectively lose your rights to your own livestock. You become a serf for the state worse than in Communist Russia. If you do not believe me then please go to the USDA web site and read the draft proposal for NAIS which is already being implemented in stages without public feedback or scrutiny. Check out the timeline

- we all must start fighting it now before it is too late. Together we can stop this fascist move to take away our property and livelihoods. We can still protect our traditional rights to farm if we act now.

Is NAIS legal? No, not under our Constitution, but that does not stop the government from implementing bad laws and regulations and then enforcing them. NAIS specifically violates the 1st, 4th, 5th and 14th Amendments and Bill of Rights. The USDA has been very hush-hush about NAIS because they know that if people really understood how far reaching it is, what an outrageous violation of our constitutional rights NAIS is, then people would stop NAIS dead. The USDA has being asking for feedback but only from the large "stakeholders" as they call them. Small farmers don't count. Homesteaders don't matter. Pet owners were completely ignored because none of these groups profit from NAIS.

How could this happen? NAIS was enabled under the Patriot Act. Killing the Patriot Act now will not be enough. Individual states have already enacted NAzIS laws. The Republicans and Democrats are both in on creating the Patriot Act and NAIS in the wake of the terrorism scare of 9/11. Using this theater of fear large corporations jumped at the chance to implement NAIS.

Why would anyone want NAIS? In a word, profits. Remember, always follow the money trail. Large meat exporters are required to provide trace-back documentation for their cattle for export to foreign markets like Japan. Agreements with the European Union are asking for similar tagging and tracking. The big meat packers announced they did not want to deal with two streams of animals, those who were tagged and those that were not so they expanded NAIS to cover all cattle. The RFID tag and equipment industry got excited about this tremendous market. In their greed they wanted NAIS extended to all livestock that might enter the food chain. Then it was extended to non-traditional food animals including horses and guardian animals.

To justify this they now claim that the purpose of NAIS is to prevent disease. It is not. They use Mad Cow (BSE) and Avian Flu (H5N1) scares to justify a program that is about profits. NAIS will not prevent or stop disease. BSE is caused by cows eating cows and it sometimes occurs randomly when a protein misfolds so traceback won't help with BSE. Testing at slaughter and stopping the practice of feeding cows back to cows are the things that will help prevent Mad Cow Disease. Avian Flu comes from wild ducks and other wild water fowl. NAIS will do nothing for either. Confinement rearing also will not help with Avian Flu - several factory chicken farms have been hit by it.

Now there is even a push to extend chipping to pets and even humans both as an implant for "medical records" and as part of the national REAL ID program so the government can better track all people within the United States.

NAIS is about profits for large meat exporters. NAIS is not about disease and has nothing to do with food safety for the American consumer. NAIS will hurt small farmers, homesteaders and pet owners with excessive fees, invasions of privacy, threats of enormous fines and onerous paperwork. It is a clear violation of our Constitutional rights. NAIS will also hurt consumers, even vegetarians because animal manures are used to grow vegetables organically. NAIS will result in the consolidation of our food supply into the hands of fewer large corporations thus making our national food chain more susceptible to attacks by terrorist organizations. The best way to prevent terrorist attacks is diversity and to spread out the food supply. Buy Local! NAIS could even cause the national housing bubble to collapse as small farmers go bankrupt and their prime developable lands get chopped up into subdivisions by developers. The damaging effects of NAIS could ripple through our fragile economy driving us into another great depression as people who supply farmers are put out of work and they stop buying.

What is the solution? NAIS should be made strictly voluntary and the rights of consumers, small farmers, livestock owners, homesteaders and pet owners should be protected from future abuses. If NAIS is such a good idea then the sellers who would benefit from the export markets and other venues requiring traceability will get higher prices so they will voluntarily join the system. There is no need to force it down everyone's throat if it is such a good idea. The very fact that the USDA is planning to make NAIS mandatory proves what a bad idea it really is. Better the carrot than the stick.

For more information about NAIS check out the FAQs at the top of the left hand sidebar and the various additional resources in the right hand sidebar on the www.NoNAIS.org web site.

Speak now while you still have the right. Let your voice be heard across the land. Start to day by contacting your local talk show radio hosts and stations.

"As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances,there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air however slight, least we become unwitting victims of the darkness."

-- Justice William O. Douglas, US Supreme Court (1939-75)

[Calpernia]

Dr. Zanoni's appearance on Metro Farm:
http://www.metrofarm.com/radio_files/479%20D%20animal.mp3

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1573646/posts
How do you say No NAIS in Japanese?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1570042/posts
Safe and Secure Food Act of 2005

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1565481/posts
USDA steps up efforts to track livestock


http://nationalpropertyowners.org
National Property Owners

Full research sections on National Animal Identification System (NAIS)


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1563271/posts
Healthy People 2010

Information on where the funding came from for NAIS


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1561077/posts
Animal Tagging and SCHOOL LUNCHES???

Information on some of the partners on these posts


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1564815/posts
Digital Angel and Microchip

Info on the technology that will be used for the tagging

[Calpernia]

Ping

[mr_hammer]

Utterly disgusting, leads you to believe the one worlders want to control every facet on our lives.

Socialism lives in almost every form or government, only a handful deserve freedom.

DO I OWN ANYTHING?

[Egon]

That will require Wisconsin farmers to voluntarily participate in identification plans and to reject misdirected concerns that livestock identification is a Big Brother invasion of a farmer's liberty.

I'm surprised this sentence could even be typed with a straight face.

Regardless of where one comes down on this issue-- the fact that these two incongruent concepts were shoehorned into the same statement tells me all I need to know about the politics of the proponent speaking here.

[Calpernia]

bump!

[Calpernia]

That sentence jumped out at me too. She was probably eating 'waffles' when she wrote it.

[Calpernia]

ping

[righthand man]

bump

[redgolum]

It is government speak. It is voluntary, but if you don't do it you will be forbidden to raise livestock. So by that definition, all laws are voluntary.

Next step, tag all new born children in the name of security, safety, and to "protect" them. The livestock protocol is only a first step.

[Mrs. Shawnlaw]

Eating waffles and wearing her Flip Flops!!

HUD wants to take away from those who Have and build free housing for the Have Nots.
Dept of Energy wants to inspect and detect for resources w/o getting our approval.
And developers dont want to give us what our land is worth.

They treat us like we are stupid by saying stuff about Food Safety. To think if I go trail riding or give my dogs a ride in the car I have to let the gubbermint know first.

BITE ME!!

[Calpernia]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1339911/posts
Parents Protest School Mandate That Students Wear Radio ID Tags

[Calpernia]

"Hello, I'm from the government and I'm here to help you"



You have to wonder if any of these morons ever owned something other than a hamster.

This will put an end to any free range fowl.

And what about fish farms? How is anyone suppose to ID fish? What happens when a seagull or something comes and feeds in your pond? Now that gull is tagged? And you get fined for the gull flying around with your tag???

[Gabz]

As Mrs. Shawnlaw so succinctly put it.........

BITE ME........

[standing united]

The government cannot control anything without the permission and cooperation of an American!

Remember the "CB radio" rage and the FCC required everyone to have a "license" to have a CB in the car or truck, and to display their numbers? So many Americans told the FCC to go to hell, that the FCC finally said uncle, and made exceptions to CB radios. It was virtually impossible to enforce.

Our County does not even know how many dogs are in the County, or, which ones are properly licensed. Why in the world would anyone tell the Fed. Gov. about your farm, and how many animals you have on your property?

Can we all say "civil war" if freddys attempt to enter private land and demand Americans animals be tagged. Nice dream, but, reality is, most Americans will tell them to go to hell again!

[Beagle8U]

Another thing this will do is force small farmers to pay more in income taxes.

If a farmer buys 20 calves to feed out to butcher size, he can write off the price he pays for them plus feed, equip. etc. from the money he gets at sale.

But 2 of them go into his own freezer and are just wrote off as "death loss".

With the tagging system, the butcher wouldn't be able to take them without the tracking number.

Sure, they are fudging a lil on their taxes, but, they work their $ss off for little money anyway.

The guy that owns a restaurant or grocery store doesn't pay anything for food either.

Its just a small perk of running a business.

I'm sick of taxes and regulations on everything!

[Calpernia]

That is true. But people are already being criminalized.

http://www.breederville.com/auction/forumtopic.php?topic=2&boardid=1

Man jailed for refusing to tag Ohio native reptiles

Associated Press

LANCASTER, Ohio - A man spent three days in the Fairfield County Jail last month for failing to put identification tags on his 10-year-old daughter's pet turtles and snakes.

Terry Wilkins, 51, is the first Ohioan to serve jail time for violating a 2000 state wildlife-preservation law that, among other things, requires owners of Ohio native reptiles to tag them.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources says a personal-integrated transponder tag slightly larger than a grain of rice must be inserted under the reptile's skin using a syringe. The chip contains a bar code readable by a hand-held scanner so that the pet's owner can be identified.

Wilkins, owner of a pet store in Columbus, claims the tagging often kills animals, causes them to develop lesions or become infertile.

Wilkins had allowed his daughter to keep eight turtles and four snakes at their home. When a state Wildlife inspector told Wilkins he would have to tag the pets and he refused, he wound up in court.

Fairfield County Municipal Court Judge Patrick Harris sentenced Wilkins to 90 days in jail, suspending all but three days. Wilkins was in jail Nov. 15-17.

Jim Quinlivan, law enforcement administrator for the Division of Wildlife, doesn't agree that tagging animals harms or kills them. On the contrary, he said, transponder tagging is the standard used by collectors, vendors, breeders and regulators for quite some time.

Quinlivan said the law has been beneficial in helping track native Ohio reptiles, curbing illegal collection in the wild and protecting rare species.

For Wilkins' daughter, Keiko, it means she must part with pets she's had since she was a toddler. They will go to a family friend in Florida.

---

Attorney Attacks Law Used In Prosecution Of Farmers

MUNCIE, Ind. -- The defense attorney for the owner of a Delaware County hog farm is challenging the constitutionality of a law which prosecutors have used to seek criminal charges against farmers after long disputes with state environmental regulators.

Jacobus "John" Tielen is fighting felony charges that claim he knowingly, intentionally or recklessly violate an environmental management law, rule, standard, permit or order in operating his farm near Eaton, about 10 miles north of Muncie.

Defense attorney Scott Shockley has asked a judge to dismiss the charges, arguing that the law was "hopelessly broad" and vague. Shockley also argued that the state Legislature -- not state agencies -- needed to define criminal acts.

A hearing on the motion was scheduled for Monday, but was delayed by Delaware Circuit Court Judge John Feick until April 12 at the request of prosecutors.

IDEM spokeswoman Amy Hartsock said the agency stressed "compliance assistance as much as possible." But she said that it was not fair to those who abide by the law "to not take action against a party who repeatedly refuses to cooperate and accept our assistance."

[Calpernia]

Not just the butcher. There are softwares that are related to this tagging system that will be at feed lots and vets. The feedlots and vets will also be taking the premise ID number for tracking.

[standing united]

"When a state Wildlife inspector told Wilkins he would have to tag the pets and he refused, he wound up in court."

How do you think the State found out about the pets? "loose lips, sink ships."

Tell the State if you are prepared to fight the charges in a proper court of law.

We have enough Americans in my area who would arm themselves and repell the State and Fed Gov. from illegaly entering our private lands. Enough said.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Yep. When they come to tag my laying hens, it's Butchering Day. Hope the "enforcers" aren't squeamish. :)

From Orwell's 'Animal Farm':

(So Napoleon, with the help of his dogs, slaughters anyone who is said to be disloyal.)

'...the tale of confessions and executions went on, until there was a pile of corpses lying before Napoleon's feet and the air was heavy with the smell of blood, which had been unknown there since the expulsion of Jones.'

(To top it off, Napoleon outlaws Beasts of England, which had served as one of the only remaining ties between Animal Farm and old Major.)