Big Brother For Animals

by Jill Richardson · 2009-05-11 03:38:00 UTC
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NAIS tagThe National Animal ID System appears more inevitable with each passing day. Small farmers say that NAIS is burdensome, intrusive, and expensive. Moreover, it essentially creates a two-class system. Factory farms register their animals by lot but small farmers must register each animal. So why are we doing this? What's the purpose of imposing a system that farmers are so vehemently opposed to?

I've never bought that NAIS was for food safety. If we cared about food safety, we would do a million easier, cheaper things first before bothering with a controversial and expensive system like NAIS. For example, we could allow for independent mad cow testing - something that is currently illegal. That's right. If you wish to test every single cow for mad cow to make 100% sure none of them have it AND you are willing to pay for that testing, the U.S. government will not allow you to do that. So how much does the government care about food safety, really?

What it's really for is the export markets. We're trying to signal to our overseas markets that we are ready to stop any animal disease outbreak on the spot, should one occur. That's what this is for. And I find that highly offensive. NAIS is going to crush small farmers, taking away the American people's right to buy healthful, humane, sustainable animal products. And the justification for that is our export markets, to ensure that people overseas can buy cheap, unhealthy factory farm products produced here, so that we can live with the pollution generated and the overseas markets can live in sparkling clean countries free of the mountains of manure of factory farms. How's that fair?

Photo credit: Wm jas of Flickr.com

Jill Richardson
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