Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] NAIS article in Times

market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Market Farming

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Allan Balliett <aballiett AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] NAIS article in Times
  • Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:27:41 -0500

Folks - Links to newspapers rot really fast, or become associated with pay-per-view. In order to keep our archives relevant, it is best to post both the url and the actual text. If it turns out that the NYT wants to sue someone for posting this article or any article to this list, send them to me. Let them sue me, because, frankly, I've got nothing to lose. Sorry that the url is not in this post, but it is in Leigh's post. -Allan Balliett

Plan for Tracking Animals Meets Farmers' Resistance
By THEO EMERY

LANCASTER, Tenn., Dec. 8 — A federal effort to quickly pinpoint and
contain outbreaks of disease among livestock is coming under attack
on farms, in Internet chat rooms and at livestock markets, ranches
and feed shops across the nation.

Although the effort, the National Animal Identification System,
intended to trace a sick animal to the property it came from within
48 hours, is still in early, voluntary stages, the United States
Department of Agriculture has had to retreat from a proposal to make
it mandatory. Officials now say that further participation will
result from financial incentives and market pressure.

"This is admittedly a very emotional issue with many folks," said
Bruce I. Knight, the under secretary for marketing and regulatory
programs at the Agriculture Department. "It's one that really asks
for a lot of patience and resolve."

Mr. Knight admits his agency has made mistakes in establishing the
tracking system, which began to be rolled out in 2005. The rule-
making process was not transparent enough, he said, which only raised
the mistrust of farmers. He said he had been meeting with groups
across the country to explain the program better.

Among other things, criticism has centered on the system's cost, its
potential for government invasion of privacy, perceived biblical
prohibitions against its technology and the question of who would
benefit.

Darrin Drake, whose family has farmed for at least 10 generations,
said he did not need the government to keep track of the hundreds of
cattle, goats, sheep and other livestock that roamed Peaceful
Pastures, the farm here in mid-Tennessee that he and his wife bought
in 1997.

"To me, this is my backyard," said Mr. Drake, who is 40. "Now, if you
started going into town and getting into people's backyards, they'd
get a little irritated. It just happens that my backyard's a little
bigger than most people's."

Mary-Louise Zanoni, a lawyer in upstate New York and the executive
director of Farm for Life, an advocacy group for small farms, calls
the effort a "scam" that will squeeze out small farmers.

"The only reason for an animal identification system," Ms. Zanoni
said, "is to serve the economic interests of large meat packers and
people who are going to sell the technology that will be
indispensable in the system."

To participate, farmers register their "premises," large or small,
with the state, which passes their information on to the Agriculture
Department. Registration is free. Of about 1.4 million premises
nationwide, almost a quarter have been registered and assigned a
seven-digit ID code, Mr. Knight said.

The next phase calls for animals to be assigned 15-digit numbers and
given tags, either individually or, in the case of animals that are
sold in lots, like pigs and poultry, collectively, according to the
agency's user guide for the system. Electronic tags are expected to
cost $2 to $3 each, and it is likely that scanners will be used to
read them, tracking the path from barnyard to slaughterhouse.

Amish farmers, who do not believe in using technology, also frown on
tagging. "We would be conscientiously opposed and have religious
convictions against the identification system," one Amish farmer from
Wisconsin wrote to Ms. Zanoni.

Industry groups have long sought an effective national tracking
system.

The push intensified in late 2001 after an outbreak of foot-and-mouth
disease in Europe and as fears of agroterrorism attacks on the United
States food supply grew after Sept. 11. Additional pressure came with
the first case of mad cow disease in the United States in 2003 and
the ban on American meat by dozens of countries, said Robert
Fourdraine, chairman of the ID committee for the National Institute
for Animal Agriculture, an industry group.

Debate over whether the program would be compulsory proved so intense
that the entire effort stalled. The only way to get it moving again
was to put to rest fears about a mandate, Mr. Knight said.

But some animal tracking supporters argue that a voluntary system
will not work. Emmit Rawls, a professor of agricultural economics at
the University of Tennessee, said one diseased animal that had not
been tagged and therefore could not be tracked could have enormous
consequences.

But Mr. Knight said that while full participation seemed unlikely, a
voluntary system would be effective.

Not all farmers oppose the program. Kenneth P. Garrett, 73, who has a
herd of about 75 beef cattle in Cannon County, Tenn., said fear of
change was driving the opposition. "I don't see any problem with it,"
Mr. Garrett said. "I don't see how it could do anything but good in
the long run."

But the program has led to alarm and confusion. In Tennessee, some
farmers were angered to learn they must be enrolled in the program to
qualify for state grants. Others discovered that if they had
participated in other disease eradication programs, they were
assigned premise numbers and registration cards.

Virginia Youmans, who has sheep and other livestock on a 53-acre
family farm in Lynnville, received a bar-coded premise ID card in the
mail.

The program "goes against everything that we believe in about privacy
and private property," Ms. Youmans said. She said that their
philosophical objections and the program's expense would probably
keep her and her husband from turning the farm into the business they
had dreamed of.

"We want to stay here and we want to keep it in farming," she
said. "If we have to go through all that, then we probably won't."




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page