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[bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

There is a good editorial in today's NYT concerning why NAIS benefits big ag 
and hurts the small farmer.  It is written by the farmer who wrote “The 
Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook” .  While good, the article has not one word about 
fourth ammendment or other privacy or gov't intrusive issues.

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Tag, We’re It 
               
BY SHANNON HAYES

Published: March 10, 2009 
Warnerville, N.Y.

AT first glance, the plan by the federal Department of Agriculture to battle 
disease among farm animals is a technological marvel: we farmers tag every 
head of livestock in the country with ID chips and the department 
electronically tracks the animals’ whereabouts. If disease breaks out, the 
department can identify within 48 hours which animals are ill, where they 
are, and what other animals have been exposed. 

At a time when diseases like mad cow and bird flu have made consumers worried 
about food safety, being able to quickly track down the cause of an outbreak 
seems like a good idea. Unfortunately, the plan, which is called the National 
Animal Identification System and is the subject of a House subcommittee 
hearing today, would end up rewarding the factory farms whose practices 
encourage disease while crippling small farms and the local food movement. 

For factory farms, the costs of following the procedures for the system would 
be negligible. These operations already use computer technology, and under 
the system, swine and poultry that move through a production chain at the 
same time could be given a single number. On small, traditional farms like my 
family’s, each animal would require its own number. That means the cost of 
tracking 1,000 animals moving together through a factory system would be 
roughly equal to the expense that a small farmer would incur for tracking one 
animal.

These ID chips are estimated to cost $1.50 to $3 each, depending on the 
quantity purchased. A rudimentary machine to read the tags may be $100 to 
$200. It is expected that most reporting would have to be done online 
(requiring monthly Internet fees), then there would be the fee for the 
database subscription; together that would cost about $500 to $1,000 
(conservatively) per year per premise. I estimate the combined cost for our 
farm at $10,000 annually — that’s 10 percent of our gross receipts. 

Imagine the reporting nightmare we would face each May, when 100 ewes give 
birth to 200 lambs out on pasture, and then six weeks later, when those 
pastures are grazed off and the entire flock must be herded a mile up the 
road to a second farm that we rent.

Add to that the arrival every three weeks of 300 chicks, the three 500-pound 
sows that will each give birth to about 10 piglets out in the pastures twice 
per year (and that will attack anyone who comes near their babies more 
fiercely than a junkyard pit bull), then a batch of 100 baby turkeys, and the 
free-roaming laying hens. Additional tagging and record-keeping would be 
required for the geese and guinea fowl that nest somewhere behind the barn 
and in the hedgerows, occasionally visiting the neighbors’ farms, hatching 
broods of goslings and keets that run wild all summer long.

Each time one of those animals is sold or dies, or is trucked to a 
slaughterhouse, we would have to notify the Agriculture Department. And there 
would be penalties if we failed to account for a lamb quietly stolen by a 
coyote, and medical bills if we were injured when trying to come between a 
protective sow and her piglets so we could tag them.

For my family, the upshot would be more expenses and a lot more time swearing 
at the computer. The burden would be even worse for rural families that don’t 
farm full-time, but make ends meet by keeping a flock of chickens or a cow 
for milk. The cost of participating in the system would make backyard farming 
prohibitively expensive. 

So who would gain if the identification system eventually becomes mandatory, 
as the Agriculture Department has hoped? It would help exporters by soothing 
the fears of foreign consumers who have shunned American beef. Other 
beneficiaries would include manufacturers of animal tracking systems that 
stand to garner hefty profits for tracking the hundreds of millions of this 
country’s farm animals. It would also give industrial agriculture a stamp of 
approval despite its use of antibiotics, confinement and unnatural feeding 
practices that increase the threat of disease. 

At the same time, the system would hurt small pasture-based livestock farms 
like my family’s, even though our grazing practices and natural farming 
methods help thwart the spread of illnesses. And when small farms are full 
participants in a local food system, tracking a diseased animal doesn’t 
require an exorbitantly expensive national database.

Cheaper and more effective than an identification system would be a 
nationwide effort to train farmers and veterinarians about proper management, 
bio-security practices and disease recognition. But best of all would be 
prevention. To heighten our food security, we should limit industrial 
agriculture and stimulate the growth of small farms and backyard food 
production around the country. 

The burden for a program that would safeguard agribusiness interests would be 
disproportionately shouldered by small farmers, rural families and consumers 
of locally produced food. Worse yet, that burden would force many rural 
Americans to lose our way of life.

Shannon Hayes, a farmer, is the author of “The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook” and 
the forthcoming “Radical Homemakers.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/opinion/11hayes.html