Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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R-CALF: Ranchers, Farmers Criticize Efforts To Tie School Lunch Program To 
NAIS



Washington, D.C. – A wide coalition of family farmers, independent ranchers, 
organic and local food system advocates from across the country today 
criticized a provision to be included in the House Agriculture Appropriations 
Subcommittee's markup bill that would force the U.S. Department of 
Agriculture (USDA) to purchase meat for the National School Lunch Program 
only from sources that are registered in the controversial National Animal 
Identification System (NAIS).



The Appropriations bill also increases funding for NAIS $4.8 million above 
2008, for a total of $14.5 million for FY2009. The NAIS provisions will harm 
the growing local food movement and consumer demand for sustainable meat, 
while giving unfair advantages to industrial factory farms who are 
responsible for the overwhelming majority of hazardous food safety practices.



Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., proposed the idea, and on Monday, R-CALF USA sent 
her a letter to ask that she withdraw the language from the bill, as R-CALF 
USA believes keeping the measure “would facilitate the ongoing trend toward 
the industrial integration and concentration of our nation’s cattle 
production industry…we share your keen desire to improve the safety of our 
food supply (but)…your current proposal would cause harm to the financial 
viability of our nation’s family farmers and ranchers without addressing the 
source of food safety problems.”



“The safety of the U.S. beef supply has not been compromised by U.S. farmers 
and ranchers, but instead, the safety of the U.S. beef supply has been 
compromised due to USDA’s failure to provide adequate oversight and 
enforcement of existing health and safety standards,” said R-CALF USA CEO 
Bill Bullard. “The Westland/Hallmark fiasco was the direct result of USDA’s 
failure to enforce the prohibition against the slaughter of downer cattle for 
human consumption, and the NAIS could not have mitigated this failure.



“Additionally, any traceback capability contemplated by the current NAIS 
program effectively ends upon the death or slaughter of live cattle – there 
is no mechanism in place to trace forward the resulting beef from an 
NAIS-participating animal,” he continued. “USDA also has refused to do proper 
testing for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE – or mad cow) and E. coli 
and has allowed meat processing plants to escape inspections, where much of 
the food safety contaminations occur. NAIS misdirects the burden for food 
safety from corporate processors onto family farmers and ranchers.”



“Once the public outcry made it clear that a mandatory NAIS was unacceptable, 
USDA and state agencies started calling the program 'voluntary,' while 
simultaneously using a variety of coercive tactics to register people – from 
data mining to denying disaster relief, to requiring it of children at state 
fairs,” said Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance President Judith McGeary, a 
Texas livestock farmer and R-CALF USA member, who has tracked state 
opposition against the NAIS program. “With over a dozen state bills 
introduced to reject a mandatory NAIS, and four states having adopted such 
bills, Congress still has not gotten the message that farmers are rejecting 
their heavy handed tactics under the false pretense of food safety.”



Given recent food safety scandals, from salmonella-infected tomatoes to the 
downer cow situation at the Hallmark/Westland plant in Chino, Calif., 
consumer anxiety is now at an all-time high. The explosive growth in farmers 
markets and interest in local foods has arisen from deep concerns about our 
industrial agriculture system and the environmental, public health and animal 
welfare impacts of industrial livestock factories.



NAIS will not do anything to provide for our children's safety and health due 
to targeting family farmers as the source of the problem instead of 
industrial livestock operations. Factory farms that house thousands of 
animals in confined conditions are permitted to have one NAIS group number, 
while a farmer with 10 chickens or cattle ranchers raising grass-fed beef 
must individually tag every animal, often with expensive electronic tags.



“As a grandparent, parent and producer, I am extremely concerned about food 
safety,” said Dena Hoff, vice-president of the National Family Farm Coalition 
and a Montana farmer. “But this is not the right way to assure food safety 
and only burdens those of us who care about how we raise our animals and our 
food, while letting the factory farms off the hook. To ensure our children's 
safety, we need local sources of meat where parents can see the conditions 
the animals are raised and slaughtered in.”



The current proposal also would harm sustainable, independent producers’ 
ability to supply schools with local food. In the wake of the downer cow 
controversy, many school districts began looking at the sources of their meat 
and exploring healthier options for students. By linking NAIS to the school 
lunch program, many organic, grass-fed and other specialty producers, unable 
to bear the costs of the program, will lose valuable market access, despite 
complying currently with traceback requirements.



Jack Kittredge, a certified organic hog and poultry farmer and public policy 
coordinator for the Northeast Organic Farming Association/Massachusetts 
explained why the NAIS linkage to school lunch purchases would put additional 
burdens on organic producers: “Meat or poultry, to be certified organic, has 
to be fully traceable from its origins at birth or hatching through to 
slaughter. This makes perfect sense since the consumer is purchasing a 
premium product and needs to know it was always raised on organic feed, had 
access to the out-of-doors, did not receive antibiotics or hormones, and was 
treated humanely. Such traceability is perfectly appropriate, and organic 
animal raisers are proud to maintain it. NAIS does not trace any of these 
important aspects of raising animals, however. It only traces the premise(s) 
where the animal was raised. It does nothing to prevent disease, stop 
inhumane treatment, or avoid contamination.”



America's children deserve to have access to the highest quality meat. 
Forcing school districts to purchase meat from sources enrolled in the NAIS 
will ultimately mean fewer options for our schools and more reliance on 
industrial meat produced under lax environmental and health standards by 
those who value profits over our children's safety. The House Appropriations 
Committee and Congress should examine seriously the implications of such a 
far-reaching proposal in light of the growing demand for sustainable, local 
food sources.