THE LATEST TYRANNY:
TAGGING TERRORIST CHICKENS
By Justin Sanders
Have you heard about the National Animal
Identification System (NAIS)? The radio ads feature a “farmer”
telling us how hard it is to make a living farming today - harder
than it was for Momma and Daddy. Worse yet, now we’ve got the risks
of all these new diseases. But - golly, golly, gee -- the
government is going to help. They’ve come up with a voluntary
program to register our farms and animals to protect us and our
animals from diseases. All good Americans will sign up.
Characteristically, the radio propaganda-speak
beareth no likeness to the truth. To prove that for yourself,
visit
www.usda.gov/nais and click on the “Draft Strategic Plan” on the
upper right hand side.
FOOD SECURITY
We all know that there is no pandemic or epidemic
now sweeping through the livestock population would demand such
drastic measures. If so, government’s first act wouldn’t be
punching an ear tag into every chicken they could catch. Any
eighteen-year-old mother who knows to hand testing a forehead for
fever can tell you that tagging ears to fight disease is
ridiculous. No, during epidemics government agents kill the
infected animals and all animals in the herd. Then they spread out
and test neighbouring herds and destroy those that test positive.
IS THEY’RE NOT FIGHTING DISEASE,
THEN WHY NAIS?
Follow the money.
Ask, Cui bono? Who benefits?
Agribusiness
lobbied the USDA to create a system to protect them from legal
liability if an epidemic does break out. More, NAIS would protect
agribusiness market share, forestalling a public revulsion against
their product by “confirming” that only a few animals were sick,
rather than not thousands. NAIS enables huge agribusiness
conglomerates that concentrate thousands of animals (and so
concentrate the chance for spreading diseases) to point their finger
at someone else.
Here’s the scenario:
-
People in Sheboygan get sick from something
they ate.
-
It’s determined the meat came from a local fast
food joint.
-
That fast food joint gets its meat from ABC cow
factory.
-
ABC cow factory buys cows from XYZ feedlots.
Those feedlots had cows numbered 1q10 through
1q500 in their possession and those cows came from 15 small farms in
suburban Tempe.
-
Goodbye 15 small farms in suburban Tempe.
-
Hello scapegoat for fast food joint,
slaughterhouse, and feedlots.
To protect themselves these large corporations
will effectively to put small farmers out of business. Not only the
program costs (which fall on the farmer), but also the threat of
fines and jail time for not complying will drive small farmers off
the land. At the same time, NAIS sets up the same corporations as
the only entities granted the ‘privilege’ to raise animals, since
they, of course are the only ones who can be trusted to follow such
a plan to protect the “national herd.”
EXEMPTIONS?
But I’ve just got a few chickens and a horse.
Not me, right?
Wrong. The NAIS
plans provide no exemptions whatever. One
chicken, one horse, one cow, one sheep, one goat, one bison, one
llama, one alpaca, one turkey, one duck -- all must register,
premises & animals.
GOODBYE PROPERTY RIGHTS
The NAIS abolishes private property rights in
farms and in animals. The NAIS, run by a branch of the USDA,
considers “your” animals to be not yours, but part of “the national
herd.” Plainly, they are right. If they can force you to register
your farm and your animals, you do not own them. They own them
because they control them. You are only inventorying property &
animals for their true owner, the federal government.
MANDATORY MEANS MANDATORY
The NAIS’s schedule fixes January 2008 for
“mandatory” enforcement. Mandatory means “forced” and “enforcement”
means “putting into force.” Not of your own free will. The
government will fine you, put you in jail, or seize your animals for
raising animals without registering them with the government --
“raising animals without a licence,” I reckon they’ll call it.
That’s right, 6,500 years of historical right will be abolished.
From now on, you’ll be breaking the law for being a farmer
without government permission.
What’s more, “The Department does not plan to
issue ‘alerts’ to inform livestock owners of the requirements until
April 2007, only eight months prior to the date when it will be
mandatory to submit the GPS co-ordinates of one’s home and the RFID
of one’s animal[s] to the USDA database.” (Zanoni, 3)
MORE GOOD NEWS
Who will pay for NAIS? You will. It does
not favour the small farmer, but corporations with huge budgets.
These conglomerates get to write off government registration fees,
etc., but the write off means almost nothing to small
farmers, who must first come up with the money to comply. The NAIS
is free now, but will not be in the future. On their website, the
NAIS states, “Even with public funding, there will be costs to
producers.” There’s a time tax, too. States, tribes, producers,
managers of livestock shows and events, market operators, processing
plants, service providers and third parties will all have to provide
labour for this system.
AND TAXES?
By registering with the NAIS you open yourself
for future taxes. By registering your car, you pay taxes. By
registering yourself as the owner of your home, you pay taxes. By
registering yourself with a social security number, you pay taxes.
Taxes for being a farmer and taxes on your animals will come, too.
THOSE FOR AND THOSE AGAINST
Tennessee (and probably your state, too) is now
implementing the voluntary premises identification section of this
plan. In your state you’ll see the Farm Bureau, the cattlemen’s
association, and the extension agents lining up. With new
government programs comes new government money. They’ll push NAIS
compliance by holding out carrots of new money available only to
those who register.
CAN WE DEFEAT NAIS?
You bet.
There’s still hope we can defeat NAIS.
Dr. Mary Zanoni, a lawyer from New York, has
filed official comments with the USDA Animal Plant Health Inspection
Service (APHIS) decrying the NAIS. She has also founded an
organisation – Farm for Life. In her brilliantly argued
statement filed in June 2005, she put this whole scheme in
perspective.
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