National "voluntary" Mandatory ID ?
- Thread starter Oldtimer
- Start date
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is there any floating back and forth among the ncba and the government that you know of? also, if you're going to lobby these guys, i guess they think they can get on their good side. moving the line is moving the line. just say no to government, quick, before it's over. vote them out.
Oldtimer
Well-known member
R.N.Reed":2bnmuv4a said:
Yep-- Same here...I told the NCBA where to stick it some time ago-which probably means little to their corporate paid off and controlled infrastructure-and I vote in every election- which in a state with few delegates probably means little again in those corporate controlled and paid off infrastructures... :roll: ;-)
But at least it makes me feel better 
popsjp
Well-known member
Some good posts oldtimer. Anyone that really thinks the government can run anything should look at our Social Sucerity, schools, etc. etc. This kind of involvment is never good for the working man.
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Below is part of an article that I pasted into this message concerning animal ID. For the entire
article, go to: http://www.texasanimalhealthcommissionw ... icle11.htm
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2. Practical and Cost Impediments to Enforcement.
As discussed more fully below (see no. 5, Lack of Notice), most owners of a small number of livestock are not even aware of the USDA's proposals at present (see, e.g., "Helping to Head Off A Livestock I.D. Crisis," Lancaster Farming, May 28, 2005, p. A38, discussing difficulties of informing all farmers of the NAIS requirements).
The Department does not plan to issue "alerts" to inform livestock owners of the requirements until April 2007, only eight months prior to the date when it will be mandatory to submit the GPS coordinates of one's home and the RFID of one's animal to the USDA database. The final rule governing mandatory home and animal surveillance will not be published until "fall 2007" (Plan, p. 10), leaving only a couple of months, at best, for notification and compliance before January 2008.
The citizens apt to own small numbers of livestock are rural dwellers who have chosen their way of life partly as a means of escaping excessive corporate and government bureaucracy. These factors suggest the likelihood of a noncompliance problem of heroic proportions.
In addition, the proposals call for an animal owner to report, within 24 hours, any missing animal, any missing tag, the sale of an animal, the death of an animal, the slaughter of an animal, the purchase of an animal, the movement of an animal off the farm or homestead, the movement of an animal onto the farm or homestead. (Standards, pp. 13, 18-19, 21.)
The Department plans to demand the following actions by all animal owners according to the stated timeline:
* January 2008: All premises registered with enforcement (regardless of livestock movements).
* January 2008: Animal identification required with enforcement.
* January 2009: Enforcement for the reporting of animal movements." (Plan, p. 17; emphasis added.)
Moreover, the NAIS will "prohibit any person" from removing an I.D. device, causing the removal of an I.D. device, applying a second I.D. device, altering an I.D. device to change its number, altering an I.D. device to make its number unreadable, selling or providing an unauthorized I.D. device, and "manufacturing, selling, or providing an identification device that so closely resembles an approved device that it is likely to be mistaken for official identification." (Standards, p. 7.)
Thousands of enforcement agents would have to be employed to find the potentially tens of millions of unregistered premises and violations of the animal identification and animal tracking requirements. Indeed, beyond the expense, the specter of these government agents entering onto citizens' property to find possible unregistered homes and animals brings to mind the actions of a frightening police state, not the actions of a government agency whose mission should be to assist rural people, not to hunt them down.
The proposed NAIS makes clear that animal owners will have to pay the costs of registration and surveillance of their homes, farms, and livestock. ("[T]here will be costs to producers, private funding will be required..." (Plan, p. 11) "Producers will identify their animals and provide necessary records to the databases... All groups will need to provide labor..." (Plan, p. 14.) In fact, the financial and labor requirements for animal owners would be huge. Livestock owners, even the owner of one pet horse who takes rides off the property, would have to invest in RFID reading devices and software to report information. The Standards and Plan do not enlighten us about the amount of these costs.
Many rural people do not have (and do not want) computers at home and even those who have them often cannot get high-speed connections. Even if some system of written or manual reporting were allowed as an alternative, this would only greatly increase the labor required for citizens who elected it. Indeed, with or without access to technology, the labor requirement would be huge.
Consider a small-to-moderate size dairy, milking 160 head. A total of about 150 cattle (75 bull calves, 50 cull cows, and 25 excess heifers) would leave such a farm each year. The farmer would be required to report each tagging of an animal and each event of an animal shipped off the farm (300 reportable events).
Plus let's assume that the farmer has 50 growing heifers outside during pasture season, and, as heifers are prone to do, they breach the fence and go off into the neighbor's fields twice during the season, and the farmer has to herd them back. This results in an additional 250 reportable events - 50 instances of heifers having to be tagged (strictly speaking, the rules would require tagging before they leave the farm -- (Plan, p. 8) -- one hopes the enforcement agents might overlook the technical violation of the farmer perhaps not being able to tag them until they are herded back), plus 100 instances of individual heifers leaving the farm, and 100 instances of individual heifers returning to the farm.
The farmer now has at least 550 total reportable events, or an average of over 1.5 times per day, 365 days per year, that the farmer must interrupt his or her other work and submit data on premises identification, animal identification, and an event code to the USDA's database. Further, the animals shipped from this farm would generate at least an additional 600 reportable events per year for other stakeholders (i.e., 75 bull calves into and out of the auction house, then onto a veal farm, off the veal farm, and to a slaughter facility (375 events); 50 cull cows into and out of the auction house, then to a slaughter facility (150 events); and 25 heifers into and out of the auction house, then onto new farms (75 events).
Thus, only one modest-sized farm would generate well over a thousand events per year requiring recordkeeping and reporting.
Indeed, the only economic advantage of the NAIS is an advantage to the corporations that manufacture high-tech tags, ID equipment, and the vast amount of hardware and software required for the system. This "advantage" is totally outweighed by the economic costs to both large and small segments of the livestock industry and the social and civil-rights costs to small producers, home farmers, and non-farming animal owners. The Department's mission should be to protect and foster agriculture, not to protect and foster manufacturers of tagging and computing equipment......................................................................
Conclusion
The NAIS proposals as embodied in the Standards and Plan are unworkable because of economic costs, the huge burdens of reporting, and enormous and needless complexity. Their justifications based on animal diseases and food safety would not be served but in fact would be harmed by the NAIS. The Department has failed to consider numerous alternative methods that might actually further animal health and food security without the vast problems of the proposed NAIS. The Department has limited any input on the NAIS chiefly to a small group of parties with a preexisting bias toward mandatory animal ID; the Department did not make its plans known to small farming interest groups and did not seek any input from such groups. Last, and first, the most fatal flaw of the proposed NAIS is its disregard for fundamental human rights enshrined in our Constitution: the right to religious freedom, the right of property ownership, the right of privacy.
Not since Prohibition has any government agency attempted to enshrine in law a system, which so thoroughly stigmatizes and burdens common, everyday behavior and is so certain to meet with huge resistance from the citizens it unjustly targets.
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It is clear that their time schedule has slipped. The above article was a bit over a year ago. However, there's big bucks to be made
by various big interests, and I do not believe they have given up. Can't you just imagine having a "reportable event" if you move cattle
from one pasture to another----or when going on a trail ride----or imagine your vet being required to report you if your sick animal
doesn't have the proper tag????
novatech
Well-known member
One person to do the job .
4 supervisors to tell him what to do.
6 accountants making sure the numbers are right.
20 airplanes with pilots making sure you did not cheat.
12 trees for the paper work.
Construction of new offices.
Maintenance of offices.
Insurance and other benefits for freeloading gov. employees.
Auditors checking you periodicaly.
Hire a secretary to keep up with all this.
2 days off work while they do the audits.
Fine paid for not reporting one calf moved to a new pasture.
When you give someone power they tend to use it.
Wonder where the money is going to come from? :roll:
4 supervisors to tell him what to do.
6 accountants making sure the numbers are right.
20 airplanes with pilots making sure you did not cheat.
12 trees for the paper work.
Construction of new offices.
Maintenance of offices.
Insurance and other benefits for freeloading gov. employees.
Auditors checking you periodicaly.
Hire a secretary to keep up with all this.
2 days off work while they do the audits.
Fine paid for not reporting one calf moved to a new pasture.
When you give someone power they tend to use it.
Wonder where the money is going to come from? :roll:
