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["Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>]

Below is an excerpt from the following Farm & Garden article:
http://www.farm-garden.com/node/802/print

Okay, simple talk. Just in case you are still reading and find yourself
in complete disbelief, let us project forward and see just how this plan
may affect some of us:

You farm with horses (two mares and a gelding - all of which you raised
and trained). You also care for a few beef cows, keep a milk cow, three
gilts, ten sheep, and raise ducks, chickens, and three goats. Your kids
have three ponies they ride. These livestock are an integral part of
your life. They help to define you.

Let us look into the future a bit. It's the year 2009 and the National
Animal Identification System has become law. You haven't paid much
attention to it because you figure it doesn't apply to you. After all,
you aren't part of the industrial food machine.

But you have been very wrong. Local agents of the government have
learned that you illegally took one of your (unregistered) teams of
horses and a wagon to town to haul people in the Easter Parade and you
were also identified as the man who traded (unregistered) manure and
three (unregistered) ewes to a local small organic farmer. It's a
Wednesday and you receive a registered letter from the government
informing that you are in violation of the NAIS for 51 infractions (one
for each undocumented animal you own plus one for your undocumented
livestock premises and one for your undocumented home) and owe the
government a $500 fine per infraction ($25,500). You are also notified
that a sheriff's marshal will be coming to your farm within two weeks to
catalog your livestock and make arrangements for trucking to have them
removed to a slaughtering plant where they will all be destroyed. Your
work horses, your kid's ponies, your wife's goats and chickens, the
cattle, all the livestock to be taken out and shot because you refused
to register them?! Shot because the government can't take a chance that
you might be harboring disease or some terrible terrorist gene. And the
fine print warns you against taking any evasive action or creating
difficulties for the law enforcement officers. Your wife and children
are going nuts with sorrow and dread. You are desperate beyond common
sense.

At about the same time your neighbor had been struggling to comply with
the NAIS, but the cost (thousands of dollars) and confusion (14 reports
to file and 3 charts to maintain on each and every individual cow) had
finally forced him to sell his small dairy herd and switch to growing
genetically modified canola.

Seven hundred miles away, an Amish farmer is visited by a team of
inspectors and told that he is in protracted violation of the NAIS and
subject to extensive fines and having his animals confiscated and
probably destroyed. The Amish man, surprised and upset, points out that
all the members of his extended community must also be in violation for
none of them have complied either. Too bad. He is informed that his farm
was selected randomly to be a test case the outcome of which they hoped
would teach others of his persuasion an important lesson.

Four hundred miles in the other direction, young Brenda curries her 4-H
steer in anticipation of a coming fair date. She doesn't even think
about the expensive implanted micro-chip which "talks" to a global
positioning radar informing federal computers of the exact whereabouts
of "Fritz" at all times. Someone at data central has accidentally
entered a wrong code number and Brenda's Fritz mistakenly shows up as an
animal which must be most likely destroyed immediately.