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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] USDA memo mandates NAIS premises identification for 2009
  • Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:55:15 -0700


http://www.wilsoncountynews.com/article.php?id=21583&n=-usda-memo-mandates-nais-premises-identification-for-2009

USDA memo mandates NAIS premises identification for 2009
December 9, 2008

Agency and big ag still deny their plans

As part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s ongoing pattern of misleading
tactics, the agency and industry organizations are backing away from an
internal Agriculture Department memo that outlines how to force registration
of real estate holding livestock, horses, or poultry under the USDA’s
National Animal Identification System (NAIS). The Agriculture Department
memo, issued on Sept. 22, dictates the procedure by which state agencies
shall register animal owners’ properties, despite the owners’ objections, if
the owners refuse to voluntarily register.

“The memo not only calls for mandatory registrations, but for branding
individuals as ‘dissenters,’” said Col. (Ret.) Randy Givens, a founder of the
Liberty Ark Coalition, an alliance formed to fight the animal identification
program. “The USDA’s document states that people who refuse to ‘voluntarily’
register their property will not only be involuntarily assigned a
registration number, but will also be assigned a special code that designates
their refusal to ‘volunteer,’” he said.

Under the National Animal Identification System, the premises registrations
are gathered into a massive national database. Individual animals will each
be tagged, using mostly microchip devices, and animal owners, even those with
pets, will have to report to the government whenever they buy or sell
animals, or animals die, or they take the animal off their property for
events such as trail rides or shows. Most independent farmers and pet owners
of livestock or horses have objected to the extensive costs and governmental
intrusion of the system. Industrial agriculture operations, which will be
able to avoid individual tagging by using group identification, support the
identification program.

USDA’s 2005 plan for the animal identification program called for it to
become mandatory by 2009. However, in response to widespread protests by
animal owners, the agriculture department announced in 2007 that the program
would be “voluntary at the federal level.” That change in strategy moved
implementation of the mandatory National Animal Identification System down to
the states, allowing the agriculture department to disclaim responsibility.
Since then, many states have been using federal guidelines and funding, under
cooperative agreements, to implement mandatory or coercive National Animal
Identification System programs.

Given the USDA’s past actions in pushing the animal identification program
despite objections, the memo was an unwelcome, but not surprising,
development to animal owners and activists. “It’s been clear to us for some
time that USDA planned to use existing disease programs to register citizens’
property,” said Karin Bergener, a horse owner and steering committee member
of the Liberty Art Coalition. “At an industry conference last year, several
state agriculture officials discussed their plans to force premises
registrations and conversion to NAIS-compliant microchip tags. The September
USDA memo just puts this plan into writing,” Bergener said.

After two groups, the Liberty Art Coalition and the Farm and Ranch Freedom
Alliance (FARFA), made the memo public on Nov. 1, concerned animal owners
promptly started calling their state departments of agriculture to inquire
what it meant. In response, the agriculture department and pro-NAIS industry
organizations such as the American Horse Council have launched a campaign to
re-cast the memo.

“This is the usual response; they are denying the plain meaning of the memo,”
said Judith McGeary, executive director of Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance
and herself a small farmer. “In a recent letter, the American Horse Council
declared that anti-NAIS activists did not understand the memo and that the
memo was discussing plans for some unspecified time in the future,” McGeary
said. “But the memo was issued by the agency, written in the present tense,
with no caveats or limitations.”

Some agriculture department regional officials have stated that they haven’t
even read the memo. Some state agriculture officials have said they do not
plan to enforce it, while one state agency has said it will be enforced only
for programs paid for by the USDA. McGeary questions, “What would they have
done if activists hadn’t publicized the memo? The agencies’ pattern is to
push NAIS behind closed doors, and to try to discredit any opposition by
disclaiming the agencies’ own written plans once revealed. The agencies and
businesses that will profit from NAIS are determined to push the program
through by whatever means they can find. It’s past time for Congress and
state legislatures to rein in these rogue agencies,” McGeary said.

For more information about NAIS or the Liberty Art Coalition, visit the Web
site http://www.libertyark.net.






  • [Livingontheland] USDA memo mandates NAIS premises identification for 2009, Tradingpost, 12/10/2008

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