U.S. Government’s Plan to Protect You From Terrorist Livestock
September 19th, 2007It’s baaaaaaaaack. Actually, it never left. But we knew that.
Via: Alternet:
NAIS would compel all owners of such animals to register their premises and personal information in a federal database, to buy microchip devices and attach them to every single one of their animals (each of which gets its very own 15-digit federal ID number), to log and report each and every “event” in the life of each animal, to pay fees for the privilege of having their location and animals registered, and to sit still for fines of up to $1,000 a day for any noncompliance.
This is Animal Farm meets the Marx Brothers!
It would be one thing if this were meant for the massive factory farms run by agribusiness conglomerates, which account for the vast number of disease outbreaks. After all, they have corporate staffs, computer networks, and existing systems of inventory tracking. But no — rather than focus on the big boys that cause the big harm, NAIS targets hundreds of thousands of small farms, homesteaders, organic producers, hobbyists … and maybe even you.
Me, you shriek?! Yes. If you keep a pony for your kids or board a couple of riding horses, if you’ve got a few chickens in your backyard, if you’ve got a potbellied pig or a pet goose, if your youngsters are raising a half-dozen ducks as part of a 4-H club project, if you maintain a buffalo or a goat just for the fun of it — indeed, if you have any farm animals, NAIS wants you in its computerized grasp.
Every farm, home, horse stable, or other domicile of these animals would have to have its address and precise GPS coordinates filed into the system’s central computer, along with the name, phone number, and other personal data of the owner/ renter of the premises. Owners of the animals would have to tag every one of them (luckily, fish ponds are not included!) with an approved tracking mechanism — most likely by implanting radio-frequency ID chips into them.
Then comes the burden of logging and reporting the “events” in each animal’s life. These not only include sales and deaths, but also any movement of the animals off the registered premises, including taking them to a vet, going to a horse show, presenting them for judging at the county fair, trucking them to another farm and participating in a roundup or sporting event.
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With the unveiling of its 2005 strategic plan, however, the USDA got way more public participation than it wanted. Quicker and hotter than a prairie fire, word of this corporate driven, bureaucratic monstrosity spread throughout the countryside, and NAIS instantaneously became the most hated initiative in rural America. Meetings were held, rallies were organized, research was done, websites sprang up, blogs raged, Paul Reveres rode, groups formed, lawyers leapt into action — and the rebellion was on!
Stunned, the establishment took a step back. The 2005 plan said NAIS was mandatory, but in November 2006, the USDA rushed out a revision declaring NAIS would be voluntary and that the feds would let states take the lead in implementing the system.
Wary farm activists, however, noted a qualifier in USDA’s declaration. NAIS was to be “a voluntary program at the federal level.” Activists were right to be on guard, for the ag establishment has been going all out to make the program mandatory at the state level, pushing state legislatures to require participation. Indiana, Kentucky and Wisconsin have already made registration compulsory, and efforts are underway to do so in Maine, North Carolina, Texas and Washington.
