N.A.I.S question

[frenchie]

I stumbled on this post about N.A.I.S on another site..Do most Americans agree with this lady.
This is her post?

I've been keeping read up on the National Animal Identification System. At first it didn't seem anything to be too concerned about. But after doing more reading, it's something I'm not going to support.
I read another article about it today and for anybody who is interested: The National Animal Identification System, Countryside & Small Stock Journal, Jan/Feb 06, page 67-70.
How do you feel about our right to privacy or lack of it? Livestock are legally a form of personal property. How do you feel about the government conducting large-scale computer -aided surveillance of its citizens simply because they own a common type of property? And let me remind you that we, the animal raisers are, going to be paying for it. Now the National Cattlemen's Beef Association is moving to privatize the database which will contain all the premises #'s, animal ID info and tracking information. This will surely result in the same abuses already evident in private databases of financial information. (Personal info for sale to the highest bidder, vulnerability to hackers and thieves, not to mention, once privatized, that firm would be out to make a profit too.) This also violates American's tradition of respect for religious freedom. Many faiths raise there own food animals, use animals for farming and transportation. Many believe that scriptural teachings or other religious texts prohibit the marking of animals or homes with high tech numbering systems. These people will be forced to violate their beliefs and comply or loose their right to own their animals.
Unfortunately the Bill Of Rights doesn't have a constitutional amendment specifically to one's right to produce one's food. I don't think our Founders would have ever thought our government would grow into a system that would compel its citizens to in effect, to ask the government for permission to produce their own food.
I believe our Born In the Land Of The Free Days are coming to an end.

 

[Texan]

I stumbled on this post about N.A.I.S on another site..Do most Americans agree with this lady.
This is her post?

I don't know anybody who agrees with her, Frenchie. I haven't seen any provisions for ID to even apply to somebody that raises their own food.

 

[houstoncutter]

From what I was told buy the USDA folks that came to our hay show was this. You try to sell it, its gotta have a number, otherwise dont worry about it no number needed....Having said that, he was asked about taking a animal to be processed at your local processor......They are supposed to keep the data on the animals they process....So how can they keep a number if the animal doesnt have a number? He got sorta mealy mouth and moved on to a different question. I dont have much confidence in the whole program....

 

[TedH71]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/17/01223/213

This is exactly what I don't want to happen to me.

 

[Oldtimer]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/17/01223/213

This is exactly what I don't want to happen to me.

This is about the way I read the the USDA's NAIS website- That by 2009 there will be legislation MANDATING the ID system- and that cattle/horses/pigs/sheep etc. will be reported by "sightings"- no matter if its ever purposely moved or not....If a vet is called it will need an ID number to be treated, if it gets out of its fence you will need an ID number to regain it, if it is slaughtered by any processor it will be required to be have an ID number.....

They even admit on the sight that this is to begin as voluntary to get participation started (and keep the howl down from people that actually believe they have a few Constitutional Rights left) - but will be legislated and made mandatory later, with penalties affixed...

 

[Oldtimer]

I stole this from another website- this is what someone was reporting about what was covered at the R-CALF convention:

Animal ID- Panel members included:
an Australian who related the Australian disaster on ID. Cost(which the government will not report) and VERY inaccurate data caused by non-readings of RFID tags were high on the list. This man said the government came to him looking for some certain cattle that the database had as his, but he had sold. He read the tags accurately (double checked) but the packer did not. Therefore the database showed them as still his and the health inspectors (he referred to them as the tag police) were looking for them. He showed them the check he got when he sold them, but that wasn't good enough. He says animal health professionals working for the government no longer work on actual animal health issues, but have been reduced to tag police.

A Man from USDA (who works on NAIS). He basically told the audience that USDA has heard concerns and it was NOT going to grant the bovine database to a single consortium. And that in deference to certain states with certain laws there would be none of those states' data turned over to private databases.

This may shoot down NCBA's plan to administer the whole database for all animals for the government- at whatever cost they want to charge

 

[flaboy+]

I'm on the fence with this and here is why. I had the state Ag guys come cut down all my Orange tree's some years back. Now I didn't have a grove or sell anything. The trees were just for my own use. They came cut them all down and left saying canker had them. Now I was there and the guy didn't even look at them. He just took his saw and started whacking. Later we were told 90% of the trees cut were not affected. Mine were not affect. I received no compensation for lost trees because I didn't do commercial oranges. Now they tracked these trees down to me by the seller filling out a form and sending to the Ag agency telling of the sell and who to. They have repeatedly done this that last several years and are now saying "maybe we made a mistake taking unaffected trees, but it's too late now". BTW, it takes about 7-10 years to get an orange tree grown enough to get any decent count of fruit from.

Now WHAT IF, something similar came about in cattle, horses, goats, or whatever and they just came around and slaughtered and burned everything to be safe?

Just thinking out loud here.

 

[Oldtimer]

USDA Again Refines Approach to Animal ID
In a letter to stakeholders last week - USDA's Chief Veterinarian John Clifford said USDA will now enter relationships with numerous animal movement tracking databases.

According to Clifford - USDA will create an architecture using technology known as a metadatabase. Clifford says that will allow USDA to search a variety of animal tracking databases - as long as they meet basic USDA standards.

Clifford also says their will be no overarching Memorandum of Understanding with any single private group. Instead - Clifford says - USDA will enter into a series of individual agreements with groups who have national animal movement tracking databases.

Under USDA's new approach - National Animal ID may prove to be a patchwork of livestock industry, individual species and breed association databases - all knitted together by the USDA metadatabase

 

[Oldtimer]

USDA backs off on centralized database and mandatory ID

Tam Moore
Capital Press Staff Writer



DENVER - There won't be a mandatory U.S. animal identification program by 2009, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has dropped a 6-month-old plan for contracting with a privatized central database to launch the cattle segment of ID.

That's the message Neil Hammerschmidt, the USDA's National Animal Identification System coordinator, brought last week to Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America.

"We won on ID," R-CALF President Chuck Kiker said after listening to Hammerschmidt's presentation Jan. 20. R-CALF and other ID critics questioned the USDA's intention to concentrate the data with a system the rival National Cattlemen's Beef Association organized, then spun off as a free-standing nonprofit organization.

The U.S. Animal Identification Organization, a consortium pushed by the NCBA, formed Jan. 10. Apparently, it won't handle all of the ID action that promises to unfold in coming years.

Instead of a single database, Hammerschmidt said, USDA, state and tribal animal health agencies will use multiple databases, relying on those who contract with the USDA to furnish livestock tracking information.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns had announced the single privatized concept in July 2005.

Hammerschmidt said it wasn't just protests from R-CALF that sank it. A variety of state animal health laws make it certain that several state veterinarians would have to keep databases regardless of the federal policy.

"Our preference is a centralized system. It is probably the most efficient ... probably the least costly," Hammerschmidt said. "However, it has been made clear to us that achieving one central database is not in the cards. We will interface with multiple databases, both in the private sector and with the states."

The mandatory program is still described this week on the USDA website at http://animalid.aphis.usda.gov/nais/index.shtml . It calls for a January 2009 implementation of mandatory ID. Hammerschmidt dismissed that plan as "a draft" that will be revised.

He told R-CALF members that on the practical side it would take 2 to 2 1/2 years for USDA to write and get public comment on complex rules needed to implement a mandatory ID scheme.

"Today there is no one working on rules to implement a mandatory program," he said. "We want to see what we can accomplish (on a voluntary basis) through market incentives, and we want to see what the market desires."

Talk of a national animal ID program began a decade ago as veterinarians realized shortcomings in tracing diseased animals back to point of infection. It was speeded along as the brucellosis eradication program, which includes ID for female breeding animals, gained success. Were brucellosis to be eradicated, that ID program would go away.

When bovine spongiform encephalopathy was confirmed in the United States in December 2003, the USDA pushed for rapid implementation of the ID plan a consortium of animal health officials had been working on. Traceback took weeks in that first BSE case, and several cattle from the Canadian shipment that included the BSE cow couldn't be accounted for.

The current plan is based on a national standard that will allow vets to trace back any animal to its birthplace within 48 hours. Susan Keller, the state veterinarian for North Dakota and part of an R-CALF panel on ID, said for some highly contagious events, such as a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, 48 hours "is not quick enough."

Keller put down cattlemen's arguments that existing hot brands do the traceback job. It's not individual ID, she said, and a lot of states have no brand system. She said she worries about exotic disease that could catch U.S. livestock unawares.

"Foreign animal diseases are a given," Keller said. "It is a question of when they get here, not if they get here. It is easy to introduce these diseases."