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Author Topic: Oppose the USDA’s Mandatory Property and Animal Surveillance Program  (Read 9367 times)
Hinkjc
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« on: October 15, 2005, 08:49:22 AM »

Why You Should Oppose the USDA’s Mandatory Property and Animal Surveillance Program
by Mary Zanoni, Ph.D. (Cornell), J.D. (Yale), Executive Director of Farm for LifeTM
P.O. Box 501, Canton, New York 13617
Telephone:  315-265-2800 Email:  mlz@slic.com

Poultry fanciers and keepers of small flocks are facing a grave threat from a proposed government intrusion into their innocent choice of pastimes and way of life.
For several years, the USDA has been working with the largest-scale animal industry organizations (for example, the National Pork Producers, Monsanto Company, and Cargill Meat) to develop a mandatory “National Animal Identification System” (“NAIS”).
However, most small scale livestock producers, people who raise animals for their own food, and people who keep horses or livestock as companion animals do not know about the USDA’s plans.
The NAIS will drive small producers out of the market, will make people abandon raising animals for their own food, will invade Americans’ personal privacy to a degree never before tolerated, will violate the religious freedom of Americans whose beliefs make it impossible for them to comply, and will erase the last vestiges of animal welfare from the production of animal foods.
The Problem
On April 25, 2005, the USDA released “Draft Program Standards” (“St.”) and a “Draft Strategic Plan” (“Plan”) concerning the NAIS.  If you think the description below sounds too bizarre to be true, please go to usda.gov/nais, read the Standards and Plan, and check the citations.
By January 1, 2008, the NAIS will be mandatory.  (Plan, pp. 2, 10, 17.)
Every person who owns even one horse, cow, pig, chicken, sheep, pigeon, or virtually any livestock animal, will be forced to register their home, including owner’s name, address, and telephone number, and keyed to Global Positioning System coordinates for satellite monitoring, in a giant federal database under a 7-digit “premises ID number.”  (St., pp. 3-4, 10-12; Plan, p. 5.)
Every animal will have to be assigned a 15-digit ID number, also to be kept in a giant federal database.  The form of ID will most likely be a tag or microchip containing a Radio Frequency Identification Device, designed to be read from a distance.  (Plan, p. 10; St., pp. 6, 12, 20, 27-28.)  The plan may also include collecting the DNA of every animal and/or a retinal scan of every animal.  (Plan, p.13.)
The owner will be required to report:  the birthdate of an animal, the application of every animal’s ID tag, every time an animal leaves or enters the property, every time an animal loses a tag, every time a tag is replaced, the slaughter or death of an animal, or if any animal is missing.  Such events must be reported within 24 hours.  (St., pp. 12-13, 17-21.)
Third parties, such as veterinarians, will be required to report “sightings” of animals.  (St., p. 25.)  In other words, if you call a vet to your property to treat your horse, cow, or any other animal, and the vet finds any animal without the mandatory 15-digit computer-readable ID, the vet may be required to report you.
If you do not comply, the USDA will exercise “enforcement” against you.  (St., p. 7; Plan, p. 17.)  The USDA has not yet specified the nature of “enforcement,” but presumably it will include imposing fines and/or seizing your animals.
There are no exceptions -- under the USDA plan, you will be forced to register and report even if you raise animals only for your own food or keep horses for draft or for transportation.
The Negative Effects
Eradication of Small Farms – People with just a few meat animals or 40-cow dairies are already living on the edge financially.  The USDA plan will force many of them to give up farming.
Loss of the True Security of Organic and Local Foods – The NAIS is touted by the USDA and agricorporations as a way to make our food supply “secure” against diseases or terrorism.  However, most people instinctively understand that real food security comes from raising food yourself or buying from a local farmer you actually know.  The USDA plan will only kill off more local sources of production and further promote the giant industrial methods which cause many food safety and disease problems.
Extreme Damage to Personal Privacy – Legally, livestock animals are a form of personal property.  It is unprecedented for the United States government to conduct large-scale computer-aided surveillance of its citizens simply because they own a common type of property.  (The only exceptions are registration of motor vehicles and guns, due to their clear inherent dangers – but they are registered at the state level, not by the federal government.)  The NAIS would actually subject the owner of a chicken to far more surveillance than the owner of a gun.  Surveillance of small-scale livestock owners is like the government subjecting people to surveillance for owning a couch, a TV, a lawnmower.  What about non-livestock animals?  Will the government next want to register all cats, dogs, and parakeets, and demand the global positioning coordinates of their owners’ houses and apartments?
Insult to Animal Welfare – The NAIS is the ultimate objectification of higher, sensitive living creatures, treating individual animals as if they were cans of peas with a bar code.  Many people who raise their own animals or buy from small, local producers do so because they are very troubled by industrial-scale production of chickens, cattle, and pigs.  These people will be forced either to sacrifice their personal privacy to government surveillance, or to stop raising their own food by humane standards.
Burden on Religious Freedom – Many adherents of plain (and other) faiths raise their own food animals and use animals in farming and transportation because their beliefs require them to live this way.  Such people obviously cannot comply with the USDA’s computerized, technology-dependent system.  The NAIS will force these people to violate their religious beliefs.
What You Can Do
Small-scale keepers of poultry and other livestock can take action to create an effective movement in opposition to the USDA/agricorporate plan.  First, small-scale livestock owners should not participate in any so-called “voluntary” state or federal program to register farms or animals.  The USDA is using farmers’ supposed willingness to enter a “voluntary” program as a justification for making the program mandatory.  (See Plan, “Executive Summary” and pp. 7-8.)
Small farmers and livestock owners can also help inform and organize others.  The USDA presently does not plan to finalize its rules for mandatory ID until the summer of 2006.  There is still time to oppose this plan.
Several farmers and other concerned citizens have joined together to form FARM for LIFETM, a public-interest organization to support the rights of small and subsistence farmers and consumers of organic, natural, and local foods.  FARM for LIFE’s first project is to stop the USDA plan for mandatory animal ID.
The organization will publish a newsletter three times a year (first publication scheduled for November 1, 2005), to inform citizens of developments concerning animal ID and other issues vital to the small farming and natural/organic food communities.  Newsletter subscribers will also be sent information at appropriate times on how to contact lawmakers and the USDA to oppose animal ID.  In addition, FARM for LIFETM will coordinate with other existing interest groups to mount an effective campaign against animal ID.
Please help STOP animal ID and support FARM for LIFETby subscribing to the newsletter: $25 Individual Subscription (1 year), $40 Institutional Subscription (1 year), Please help with an additional donation in any amount. Make your check payable to “Farm for Life” and mail to: Farm for Life, PO Box 501, Canton, New York 13617.

Help Preserve Your Rights:
Go here for more.
http://www.poultrypress.com/hobby/



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Johnny Glades
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« Reply #1 on: October 16, 2005, 11:05:35 PM »

Thanks for the link! I made 3 copies of the letter, and will mail them tomorrow, 1 going to my Rep., and 1 each going to Senior, and Junior senators.
~~~Johnny~~~
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koboa
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« Reply #2 on: October 17, 2005, 03:24:58 PM »

thats is crazy stuff im going to oppose too.
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JK III
beanfarmer
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« Reply #3 on: October 18, 2005, 12:31:15 AM »

(I am not a real farmer.  So this would not hurt me much.  But a real farmer it could bury under a mountain of red tape and paperwork.)

I've done stupid things but the USDA is proposing something that would raise the bar for village idiots all over the world.  It is called the “National Animal Identification System” (“NAIS”).  Links to it are at http://animalid.aphis.usda.gov/nais/index.shtml

It would require the registration of every chicken, cow, horse, pig and anything else you find in hot dogs.  AHPA authorized USDA to come up with NAIS to ID animals so that they could be tracked by GPS so information could be put in CFR to prevent BSE, ASAP.  If you understand that you should quit farming and work for the government.  It is designed to handle a very real threat that the USA has not had very much of.  BSE (bovine spongwhatever encephsomething) and bird flu are the big ones.  But it would force small family farms to abandon raising birds, sheep, pigs, cows, and even horses or be saddled with record keeping of birth, death, and where it went, and tagging or planting a micro-chip in every single individual thing that you could possibly conceive is livestock. 

Call your congressman, email the president, write your senator, send a letter to the editor, alert your neighbors, get the women and children off the streets, and circle the wagons.  To find the address of your representative or senator go to http://www.vote-smart.org/ or call 1-888-VOTE-SMART.  (1-888-868-3762)
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quailacres
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« Reply #4 on: October 18, 2005, 02:46:18 PM »

I think that Bean Farmer has a great idea: send an e-mail to our senators and members of the House of Representatives. Both the House and Senate have oversite committees for the Agriculture Department. The congressmen/women who are on those committees are particularly important as the USDA will respond to them. Members of congress like to help people in their state and are often glad to send a letter on your behalf to a government agency. And on a relatively small issue like this (but a big issue for us) they USDA could back off rather quickly if enough members of Congress contact USDA on behalf of their consituents.
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Hinkjc
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« Reply #5 on: October 19, 2005, 09:00:09 PM »

Get everbody you know that likes haveing pets to copy these forms and mail them.

 Email anybody you know that may like there right to have animals, without the dam goverment getting there nose in it.

Chuck
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Buff Orpingtons,
Btm Black Orpington,
LF Modern Araucana,
Lavender AKA Self blue Orpington project,
Lavender AKA Self Blue LF Araucana Project,
Wild Eastern Turkeys,
Butler Bobwhites,
Pure White bobwhite,
Edwards Pheasant
Mutant pheasants
CharlieHorse
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« Reply #6 on: April 02, 2008, 10:51:50 AM »

 s178
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mark
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« Reply #7 on: April 02, 2008, 12:13:07 PM »

After reading the original post and going to the USDA site, it seems to me that it has become a voluntary program.

Mark
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CharlieHorse
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« Reply #8 on: April 02, 2008, 12:37:28 PM »

...........become a voluntary program.

Yeh, that's what they've said and are saying.  But,  my farmer friends with dairy and beef cattle are saying different, they say that it is here and will be mandatory within the next year or so........at least for cattle, which is just a foot in the door until they get the bugs worked out?   :x  ......and then it will be common place and they'll come after the rest of us.  Just like everything else in this country.....just set back and take it and say, "yes sir!",   when we should be showing them nothing, but a certain finger. 
« Last Edit: April 02, 2008, 05:31:40 PM by CharlieHorse » Logged

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wildergamebirds
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« Reply #9 on: April 02, 2008, 08:42:55 PM »

After reading the original post and going to the USDA site, it seems to me that it has become a voluntary program.

Mark

  OK, Mark it's BOHICA time.
« Last Edit: November 20, 2008, 11:29:59 AM by wildergamebirds » Logged

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CharlieHorse
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Northern Bobwhites

« Reply #10 on: June 13, 2008, 06:38:37 PM »

 s178

Check this out:

http://www.eetimes.eu/industrial/196900063
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What do you mean I have to press 1 for english.

« Reply #11 on: June 13, 2008, 08:18:02 PM »

I used to raise 60,000 baby turtles a year and I always got one of those 1 in. thick surveys from the USDA every year and I would just throw it away...
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CharlieHorse
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Northern Bobwhites

« Reply #12 on: November 20, 2008, 09:22:15 AM »

 s178
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Reeves
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« Reply #13 on: November 20, 2008, 04:11:12 PM »

Quote
« on: October 15, 2005, 06:49:22 AM »

Bored are we ?
Or looking for new news ?

World has bigger issues to deal with at the present time....

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CharlieHorse
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« Reply #14 on: November 20, 2008, 05:10:44 PM »

I agree.   But..............

............These programs haven't stopped. It could be a source/excuse for more mandatory $$.    ^-^    These people are tricky!   :-o   And sneaky.  (lawyers/politicians)   :sad:

I know what everyone that I know is doing these days  :-|.......and don't have time to keep up on what's sneaking up on them and read all the propaganda. I personnally know of a farmer who claims this is a reality.   :-|

People need to know why their food is so expensive.
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