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[bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

As ususal, I forgot to put the link.............

http://www.dairygoatjournal.com/issues/86/86-6/the_nais_controversy.html


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--- On Sat, 12/6/08, bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Homestead] New NAIS article from this months Dairy Goat Journal
> To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Saturday, December 6, 2008, 3:19 PM
> This long , one-page article was written by a very
> interested and dedicated young person.  These types of youn
> people need to be respected and supported.  If anyone knows
> how to talk to a youn person like this, a nice email might
> be appreciated.  I , personally, do not understand or know
> how to communicate with anyone under the age of
> 25...................................................
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Tracked:
> The NAIS Controversy 
> 
> By Maria Magaldi  
> 
> 
> Introduction: My name is Maria Magaldi. I'm a junior in
> high school from Connecticut. This year my U.S. history
> teacher gave my class a chance to pick a topic for our
> research papers as long as we used primary sources. I keep a
> small farm of Nigerian Dwarf goats and I was curious about a
> program another goat keeper said she was "forced
> into" called NAIS. I decided to research it and educate
> myself as it could potentially affect me and my goats in the
> future. As I researched and discovered more and more about
> the National Animal Identification System, I became furious
> and decided, after I wrote my paper, that I wanted to share
> what I found with the world. 
> 
> It is the 21st century and the U.S. is one of the major
> world powers. Having used Roosevelt's "big
> stick" to control Cuba, the Philippines and the
> surrounding U.S. territories, the government is now turning
> to its own citizens to wield a new stick—a microchip
> smaller than a penny. With the approval of the U.S.
> Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug
> Administration (FDA), these microchips—marketed mainly by
> the Digital Angel Company—are being injected into animals
> across America.
> 
>  The purpose is to further implement the USDA's
> brainchild, the National Animal Identification System
> (NAIS). This program is being promoted as a way to enable
> the government to track the movements of animals in order to
> more quickly eradicate a disease. Although NAIS could
> potentially help officials contain a widespread livestock
> epidemic, it is nevertheless unconstitutional as its
> operation infringes on animal owners' constitutional
> rights and its possible mandatory establishment would be
> medically and ethically harmful. 
> 
> According to the USDA's NAIS website, NAIS will
> "help us [USDA] protect U.S. livestock and poultry from
> disease and spread, maintain consumer confidence in our food
> supply, and retain access to domestic and foreign
> markets." Animals included in the plan are: cattle,
> bison, poultry, swine, sheep, goats, cervids (e.g., deer and
> elk), equines (horses), and camelids (e.g., camels,
> dromedaries, llamas, alpacas).
> 
>  There are three steps to NAIS: (1) Registering premises
> and obtaining a premise ID number, (2) Identifying animals;
> (3) Tracking/tracing the animals on a database. Registering
> a premise requires filling out a form provided by the USDA
> including one's address, phone number(s), and operation
> type. In return, one receives a small card with a Premise
> Identification Number (PIN), a unique seven digit code
> containing both letters and numbers. So far 459,859 out of
> an estimated total of 1,438,280 premises have been
> registered with the USDA—that's 32%. Step two:
> identifying animals is when each individual animal is
> registered with the USDA and given a 15 digit Animal
> Identification Number (AIN). The animal's background is
> recorded onto a database. USDA states that officials can
> access this information in "the case of an animal
> health event." Step three: tracking animals on a
> database is the final step of NAIS. A person can choose if
> they want information on
>  the movement of their animals—recorded on a tracking
> database—to be available to the state or privately owned
> industry groups. All three steps will allow the government
> to have control in the case of a disease outbreak. (NAIS) 
> 
> Companies and associations have aligned themselves with the
> USDA and the NAIS program. In particular, meat tycoons
> Tyson, Purdue, and Cargill are readily agreeing to the
> USDA's plans. All three are on the USDA's 2008 list
> of approved plants to receive slaughtered animals. On the
> Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) Business Plan to
> Advance NAIS, management from U.S. official plants met with
> the USDA to discuss premise ID and to receive other
> information about NAIS. In addition, Digital Angel, the
> company responsible for producing the microchips used in the
> animals is directly aligned with NAIS.
> 
>  Digital Angel is listed in the 2007 FDA Listing of
> Acceptable U.S. Industries along with its sister company,
> VeriChip which provides microchips for human use. The
> Digital Angel site states that the company has
> "manufactured RFID microchips for millions of pets
> throughout the world, providing them with unalterable and
> permanent identification should they become lost or
> stolen... [and] pioneered RFID solutions to help farmers,
> ranchers, sale barns and other livestock producers to
> identify and track animals in efforts to ensure the health
> and safety of the world's food supply" (Digital
> Angel). RFID is radio frequency identification
> technology—a microchip or a device containing a microchip.
> With the support of mass companies such as these and a
> standard microchipping device, the USDA can more easily
> implement the NAIS plan. 
> 
> However, the majority of farms and animal owners in the
> U.S. do not support the NAIS. These people are the small
> farmers, the 4-Hers, the FFA members; the backyard animal
> owners who only have small herds of animals. And yet, these
> people are feeling the majority of the pressure of NAIS and
> the government. Hundreds of anti-NAIS websites and
> newsletters bear headlines demanding rights for the small
> farmer. In Bonnie Jameson's article published in the
> May/ June 2007 edition of the Dairy Goat Journal, she wrote
> how her daughter received an Oklahoma NAIS Premise ID card
> when she registered for a local FFA livestock show. Zealous
> farmer, Lynn Miller wrote a passionate article for the Small
> Farmer's Journal describing the potential problems that
> farmers will encounter when the NAIS program becomes
> mandatory. He believes that the numbers of small farmers
> will decline and be driven out by government red tape and
> fines until all farming and food production is left
>  up to the major industries. Essentially, it is not
> NAIS' goal of eradicating disease that is sparking
> controversy within farming communities, but the actions one
> needs to take while complying with the program and the
> possible consequences of the actions that are the roots of
> the debate. 
> 
> Animal owners are wary of the fact that the government will
> store their personal information including their address,
> full name, phone number, and type of farm on a national
> database if they fill out the NAIS premise form. The USDA
> says that it will need this information in an emergency. In
> a report to the Congressional Requesters of the GAO
> (Government Accountability Office) on homeland security and
> agroterrorism attacks, the USDA testifies that in the case
> of a disease outbreak that has been confirmed by USDA
> technicians, "the affected herd and all cattle, sheep,
> goats, swine, and susceptible wildlife—infected or
> not—within a minimum 10 kilometer zone around the affected
> farm would be killed...slaughtered and disposed of by
> incineration, burial, or rendering," (Homeland Security
> 31).
> 
>  So if the USDA had access to premise information during a
> disease outbreak and knew that a farmer lived within the 10
> kilometers, the farmer's livestock would be wiped out
> even if the herd was operating on a closed basis. Later, the
> government could find out by a second test that the medical
> result was false positive and that there never was a disease
> rampant in the area. 
> 
> There is also the unconvincing claim made by the USDA that
> NAIS is a voluntary operation. Nevertheless, states have the
> power to decide if they want NAIS to be mandatory. The NAIS
> official User Guide states "Under our current
> authorities, USDA could make the NAIS mandatory, but we are
> choosing not to do so...participation in every component of
> NAIS is voluntary at the federal level" (NAIS User
> Guide). However, farmers and rural landowners have been
> receiving yearly envelops from the Agriculture
> Identification Survey (AIS) which clearly state on the front
> that "your response is required by law". 
> 
> It also states that by neglecting to fill out the
> information, one will be fined $100. In Mary Zanoni's
> article in the 2006 March/April edition of Dairy Goat
> Journal, she states that although the AIS denied that they
> were connected to NAIS, the USDA claims that the AIS
> envelopes and information were "done through a contract
> with the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service"
> (Zanoni 2006 Agricultural Identification System 10). Then
> there is the term dubbed "critical mass" by the
> USDA. 
> 
> Critical mass is NAIS' benchmark, when the USDA will
> evaluate the progress of NAIS and decide whether there is
> enough participation. It is NAIS' hope to have 70%
> livestock participation by the year 2009 (NAIS). It is
> implied that if the critical mass is not reached, the
> program will become either mandatory or at least more
> strongly enforced. "U.S. Department of Agriculture
> materials say that the goal is full, mandatory participation
> by 2009" (Boyer ¶1). Forced participation and an added
> cost burden is enough to make American farmers cringe. 
> 
> On the NAIS national website, the USDA alleges that
> registering for a premise is free. However, the USDA
> confesses that individual states "may choose to keep
> premises registration free or not" (NAIS User Guide
> 20). The other two steps of NAIS and their included costs
> should be considered. The second NAIS step "animal
> identification" requires a form of identification such
> as a tag or microchip with the AID code on it. According to
> the NAIS User Guide, a simple tag is usually $1 per animal,
> radio frequency tags are between $2-3 and implantation of a
> microchip (for a horse) is between $15-20. This price does
> not include the veterinary visit. 
> 
> Typically veterinary visits range from $50-200 depending on
> the number of animals and the hours. Just say that a farmer
> has a herd of 100 cattle. He decides to pay for the
> microchip in order to participate in the NAIS tracking
> program. If his vet bills him $150 for the visit and $20 per
> microchip implantation, he will spend $2,150 which is more
> than most small farmers can afford. This price does not
> include the price of upkeep. Compliance with the last step
> of animal tracing has a hefty price tag. In several of the
> animal tracking database sites, one must be a member to be
> able to log in and view the prices of the systems available.
> The USDA says that costs will vary depending on the
> services. 
> 
> They too do not give a direct price but instead hope that
> "competitive forces in the free market will keep costs
> down" (NAIS User Guide 9). Not only is the price
> dissuading farmers, but the consistent reporting of animal
> movements once registered in the tracking database is
> outraging them as well. NAIS' goal is that farmers
> report within a 24 hour timeframe any movements of animals
> according to the relative level of importance of the
> movement. A fair, sale, market, or auction are all
> considered high levels; while trail rides and local events
> are of low level exposure to disease. (NAIS User Guide) 
> 
> Many believe that NAIS is a violation of the
> Constitution—in particular the First, Fourth and
> Fourteenth Amendments. The Amish feel threatened by NAIS and
> believe that their right of "freedom of religion"
> given by the First Amendment is being taken away from them
> and they fear that the program will force them to choose
> between obeying their religion and complying with government
> laws.
> 
>  Many are selling their livestock in order to avoid
> microchipping their animals. The Amish say that a passage in
> the book of Revelation in the Bible alludes to "the
> mark of the beast" which they believe is the microchip
> and the implementation of a mandatory microchipping program.
> "He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor,
> free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on
> their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one
> who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of
> his name." Revelation 13:16-17. 
> 
> The Fourth Amendment secures privacy and protects citizens
> from unwanted and unwarranted searches. If the government
> did make NAIS mandatory, people owning unregistered
> livestock could be either fined or the animals could be
> instantly killed if the government deemed it necessary or if
> they felt that the animals' health was suspicious. The
> Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution states "nor
> shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
> property." Animals are a person's property just the
> same as, say, a house or land. Making a person give up this
> privilege or forcing a person to disobey their religion is a
> complete disregard of the Constitutional amendments. 
> 
> Not only are there circulating concerns on a moral basis,
> but physical health concerns as well. VeriChip, the human
> RFID (radio frequency identification device) is similar if
> not identical to the RFID Digital Angel used in livestock.
> VeriChip's founder was in fact Digital Angel. In a
> letter from the FDA to the VeriChip Company, the FDA
> responds to VeriChip's request to use its microchip in
> hospitals as identification. 
> 
> The FDA also lists the potential health risks related to
> the transponder "adverse tissue reaction; migration of
> implanted transponder; compromised information security;
> failure of implanted transponder; failure of inserter;
> failure of electronic scanner; electromagnetic interference;
> electrical hazards; magnetic resonance imaging
> incompatibility; and needle stick." (Evaluation¶8).
> 
>  These are the same issues that the livestock RFID would
> have. Electromagnetic interference and MRI incompatibility
> has been further researched by the FDA. During an MRI, a
> radio frequency field (such as one emitted by the RFID)
> could potentially cause burns on the patient as it generates
> electromagnetic currents resulting in the heating of the
> device. In addition, exposed to an MRI the electromagnetic
> fields conflicting with each other could cause malfunctions
> in the RFID. (A Primer on Medical Device Interaction) In the
> "Adverse Event Report" section of the FDA website
> there are two publications. In both, the women had VeriChip
> implants.
> 
>  The first woman found the microchip caused her extreme
> discomfort and she had to have a fluoroscopy to find the
> microchip before she could have it surgically removed. The
> second woman was volunteering in a government study to test
> the effects of radiation (magnetic and microwave) on the
> device. In the report, the woman's hypertension worsened
> and she began to have serious cardiac problems. She wrote
> "The government states that this is nonlethal but I beg
> to differ. I would like...full investigation and stop to
> this study until further data can be gathered to support the
> harmful effects..." (Adverse Event Report VeriChip). 
> 
> A study based in France using the results of three
> different studies found that microchip-associated tumors
> from livestock RFIDs were "4.1% with 52 animals bearing
> a microchip associated tumour out of 1260".
> (Subcutaneous Microchip Associated Tumours) In a report
> published by the VeriChip Corporation "Eighteen of 117
> mice (10%) were diagnosed with an undifferentiated
> histologically malignant sarcoma arising at the transponders
> site, the earliest at 15 weeks after implantation"
> (Tissue Reactions 2).
> 
>  This number is extravagant and oncology experts are
> agreeing. Director of the Center for Sarcoma and Bone
> Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Dr.
> Demetri felt that the numbers of sarcomas developing in mice
> from the microchips posed high risks if the same microchips
> were injected in humans and other animals. (Lewan ¶27) 
> 
> There is a video advertisement on the Digital Angel website
> that shows a woman and her dog reunited because of a
> microchip that was implanted in the dog. However there is
> another story, similar to this one but lacking the happy
> ever after ending that Digital Angel seems to promise. 
> 
> In the summer of 2004, Lisa Massey of Virginia lost her
> eight month old pit bull terrier, Hadden, but she felt
> assured because she knew that her dog had a microchip. A
> shelter in Stafford County found Hadden and scanned him for
> a microchip, but the scanner was unable to find a microchip.
> After waiting 10 days without hearing from an owner, Hadden
> was euthanized. Thirty minutes later, Massey called the
> shelter and asked if her dog was there. Hadden was scanned
> again and a message popped up on the scanner screen. The
> message read "Microchip found." 
> 
> This devastating experience was due to the incompatibility
> of the scanner and the lack of radio frequency waves emitted
> by the microchip. Often scanners do not work with all types
> of microchips as there is no universal microchip or scanner.
> 
>  The USDA does not have the power to enforce a universal
> microchip system where the microchip matches the scanner.
> (Nolen 2) This could pose a serious problem if NAIS was made
> mandatory. If an animal did have a microchip, but the
> scanner could not read the chip number, the owner could
> still be fined for defying government regulations. 
> 
> Due to the "success" of livestock microchip
> implantations, microchips are starting to be used in humans.
> They are being injected into bar attendees such as the
> visitors who go to the Baja Bar in Barcelona, Spain. There
> the microchip records tabs and money owed. Microchips are
> being used to track hospital patients and people who have
> Alzheimer's and other mentally degenerative disorders.
> Even average citizens are volunteering to get microchips
> implanted under their skin. But the problems still remain. 
> 
> Ten years from now the farming industry could be entirely
> dominated by the government acting through the USDA and mass
> corporations. If Orwell's 1984 becomes a reality, NAIS
> will be remembered as a national shame. After all, even the
> Secretary of Agriculture, Ed Schafer referred to the USDA as
> "Big Brother" (Transcript 8). So please, sign
> petitions and call and write to government officials. Today
> the first step in the plan and with this secrecy...who knows
> what tomorrow will be? 
>  
> 
> 
> 
>       
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