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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.