Bush's Flips Family Farms The Bird

The outgoing Bush administration has leveled a tremendous blow to small farmers and ranchers and slow food, local food aficionados as a parting shot before vacating the premises. On January 13th, the USDA/APHIS entered a proposed rule in the Federal Register that would effectively mandate the first two stages of NAIS (National Animal Identification System) for livestock owners.

The rule, if it is finalized as they plan, will directly affect cattle and bison, sheep and goats, as well as hogs. Owners of other livestock, such as poultry, fish and equine shouldn't think this won't affect them as there are other things in the offing that will ensure the full entrapment of all animal agriculture into this corporate consolidation scheme.

For those unfamiliar with NAIS, it is a three part program consisting of premise id (PIN) for any location that houses or holds any one of 33 species of animals, followed by either individual or group identification of every single animal, and topped off with 23 'event' reports that will be housed in a database for a fee paid by the livestock owner and accessible to the USDA but held by the likes of the USAIO (a consortium of the Cattlemen and Farm Bureau) in case the USDA wants to trace animal movements or whereabouts.

The single stated goal of NAIS is to effectuate 48 hour tracking of every animal just in -case- there is a disease of concern. In layman's terms, you need a social security number for your property, a birth certificate for your goat, and movement reports that exceed the surveillance criteria for sex offenders. It ends at slaughter or death and will do nothing to improve food safety as it doesn't carry over beyond the point of death. (There are several websites where you can learn more about NAIS, No NAIS and NAIS Infocentral are two with the most pertinent official documents and links to other sites that may be helpful.)

Without variance, those who are for NAIS either don't know the details or stand to gain financially through it's implementation. Technology and tag manufacturers, consolidated agriculture corporations, database development and maintenance companies (yes, Microsoft received a deal through this) and bureaucrats who want to continue to be employed by government are the only ones who stand to benefit.

Involuntary Compliance

Although the USDA's mantra has been "NAIS is voluntary at the federal level' since 2006, the NAIS cooperative agreements (contracts with states) have been busily pushing for states to mandate NAIS to make it de facto mandatory. Now, after four states have passed constraining legislation against NAIS and twelve have had constraining legislation introduced, the current administration, (under whom the program has spent at least 138 million dollars) is throwing a mandatory NAIS in the face of farmers, ranchers and hobbyists at the worst time in financial history, also at the time of transition to the new administration.

However, since the rule that has been proposed on January 13th will close for comment on March 16th and only then be open to become a final rule, the nearly full implementation of NAIS will rest squarely on the Obama administration, so they must be made aware of the details of this program.

The habit of the Bush USDA in the implementation of NAIS has been to put the cart before the horse. First, departed Secretary Johanns publicly stated that NAIS was protected under the Privacy Act in 2006, then in June of 2008, after they received notice that they were being sued, they belatedly and wrongfully tried to enter the various NAIS databases into the class of protected information under the Privacy Act via the federal Register. This attempt was rescinded by court order.

They put the cart before the horse again with this latest federal register entry. It's important to understand that the USDA has stated in the Federal Register release that they would need to amend definitions and other rules to complete the proposed rule they offered up on NAIS. The USDA has repeatedly violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) in their implementation of NAIS by attempting to mandate it through soft law rules like the Veterinary Services memos mandating NAIS Premise Identification Numbers (PIN) for any disease control program with or without the participants agreement to be included in this series of databases.

Cost to the Producer

In this latest attack on small farms, the most important aspects of the proposed rule are the complete consolidation of all disease programs into NAIS via the issuance of PIN numbers to all participants.

It will be done like the Scrapie program. Your current Scrapie premise number will stay the same, but will overlay a NAIS PIN and be cross-referenced through the NAIS databases. Also, they say that they will continue to allow the metal brucellosis tags, but they now have to be imprinted with a US Shield (which will be no small feat for the imprinters) and will be tracked through the AINMS, or Animal Identification Numbering Management System, and connected to the NAIS Premise Identification Number of the farm where that animal is identified.

It sounds crazy, and it is, but basically what they are saying is that if you get a brucellosis, tuberculosis or other test as a regular course of business, the animals on your property right now will be entered with their current id into the NAIS databases and you will be assigned a PIN.

The rule also states that all future animal identification will be the NAIS 840 tags, and nothing else, so it becomes a bit of a wrangling effort to ascertain what the heck exactly they are saying in these ten pages of proposed rules. To break it down you have to wade through Orwellian double speak and the definitions of definitions. What they are doing is closing all other forms of id and all other forms of ascertaining the location of the above mentioned species. The only id that will be acceptable will be tied to a NAIS PIN and that is the bottom line. "840" tags or microchips will be the norm, and even if they do allow tattoos for certain classes of animals like feeder swine, those will be attached to a NAIS PIN.

The addition of the AINMS to disease program rules makes it clear that no options will be left for participation in commerce of those who are adamantly opposed to NAIS. The AINMS has only been referenced in NAIS non-binding documents until now. All id will be transitional to the "840" identification unless the animal is part of a group lot scenario like chickens and hogs that are corporately owned and commercially grown. The noose is around the neck of free range chickens and pastured pigs as well as the small dairy, beef, goat and sheep growers. If it isn't a confinement facility, you will be dealing with individual animal id on everything, and it will become costly as time goes on.

The USDA states in the FR release that although they don't expect the costs to be too tremendous, the manufacturers should pass the costs of transitioning to "840" tags on to the producer to help manufacturers with their expenses. So just like in the NAIS documents to date, the costs of implementation are to be borne by the producer. Those costs have yet to be determined as the cost-benefit analysis isn't completed yet, but they'll go ahead and mandate the most destructive program in history on farmers at the time of the largest financial crises in history anyway.

Nowhere to Hide

Also, of particular concern to those in the states that have passed constraining legislation against NAIS, the USDA states that the final rule on this proposed rule will preempt any state legislation or regulation. So forget about the 10th amendment entirely, folks. The USDA evidently believes that even though they have no authority over intrastate commerce they can overlay NAIS without any congressional approval and go against states best interests and laws because they want to.

The bottom line about the USDA's recent efforts to mandate NAIS is that the incoming administration and the federal legislature is going to have to constrain this rogue agency or allow for the complete destruction of rural America and local food choices.

Even if you eat no meat or dairy at all, your organic vegetables will need to be grown with CAFO manure or petrochemical fertilizer as small scale animal agriculture will become a thing of the past in very short order. If you eat and care about food at all, you need to become active against the National Animal Identification System.

(Photo credit: Irish Typepad on Flickr.)