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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] NAIS

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  • From: "Wiediger, Alison" <alison.wiediger AT hart.kyschools.us>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] NAIS
  • Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 08:08:12 -0600

Yep, bad policy.  I meant that they should exclude all of us who direct market – sorry you misunderstood.  But what else can we expect from paper pushers in Washington?

 


From: market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of road's end farm
Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2006 8:04 AM
To: Market Farming
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] NAIS

 

 

On Nov 1, 2006, at 11:06 AM, Wiediger, Alison wrote:

 

Cattle going to sale barns and then to CAFO facilities are a quite different story.  Direct marketers should be exempt

 

NAIS to the best of my knowledge not only has no exemption for direct marketers, but also has no exemption for, and in fact specifically includes, animals not expected to enter the food chain at all. I believe that not only animals to be eaten by the family who raises them, but also horses and other animals of "livestock" species that are kept as pets, transportation, etc. are included. Also, all movement of the animal from or back to its originating party is to be reported, not only movement for purposes of sale. My Mennonite neighbors may take their buggy horses off their property nearly every day of the week.

 

On Oct 31, 2006, at 4:47 PM, Brigette Leach wrote:

 

I don't

buy the argument that the program will put family farmers out of

business, either. It's singing the same old sad song, poor pitiful me.

If one can't meet regulations designed to protect our food supply, then

perhaps one should find another occupation.

 

The disease outbreaks reported frequently in the papers this year and in other recent years are not the result of small scale production. They are the result of large scale production, in which diseased spinach from one field or one sick cow get mixed with large quantities of other meat or produce; the resultant mixture is then shipped all over the place, and infects people in multiple states. A system designed to penalize small producers is not going to decrease your chances of getting sick; it's going to increase them.

 

Regulations genuinely designed to protect our food supply would forbid raising animals in the conditions most likely to encourage disease: that is, large confinement operations, especially those feeding an unnatural diet. (Cattle fed diets very heavy on grain have different conditions in their digestive systems, which encourage the growth of the pathogenic strain of E. coli.)

 

Many years ago, the government responded to disease problems in milk by requiring, not only that the milk test as clean (which was perfectly reasonable), but that specific processes be undertaken on the farm to produce this cleanliness. When most small producers managed to meet the first set of standards (witness all those concrete milkhouses attached to the remains of old dairy barns), the standards for production techniques were made stricter and more expensive. Most small dairy producers went out of business. The problem wasn't, in most cases, that they couldn't produce clean milk; it was that they couldn't afford the specific technology being required; which was required despite the fact that it was possible to produce clean milk without that technology, and that it was possible (and is in fact done) to test the milk to confirm that it was clean before it entered the standard food distribution system.

 

A smaller number of years ago, salmonella started turning up in eggs produced by large confinement operations; the chickens had chronic lowgrade infections in their oviducts, and the disease organism was getting inside the eggs. This problem did not begin on small farms -- people had been raising chickens for thousands of years in conditions of varying sanitation or the lack of it, and the insides of eggs remained generally sterile. Did the government close down those operations causing the problem? No. Did the government require that the chickens be tested, and infected ones removed from the food chain? No. Did the government require that chicks be tested before sale to others as future egglayers? No. Did the government require that the chickens be raised in an environment less conducive to disease? No. What the government did was to announce that from now on everybody needed to hardcook their eggs.

 

I don't think there is a widespread deliberate conspiracy against small farmers, or small business in general, among members of the US government. But most of them know nothing much about either; and they (like most of us) tend to believe who they have lunch with. Who do they have lunch with? The people who can afford to spend time hanging out with them. Who is that in this case? The owners of very large farm operations; and the producers of microchips.

 

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly

Fresh-market organic produce, small scale




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