If fully adopted and implemented, the likely
outcome of NAIS is that animal ownership increasingly will be limited to large
entities who can afford to comply and who are willing to accept the
governmental intrusion. Yet this "feel good" program will do
virtually nothing to safeguard animal health, its alleged purpose. Rather, NAIS
will do all of the following:
- drive small producers and their
supporting suppliers (feed stores, auction houses, etc) out of existence
- make people abandon raising
animals for their own food and as pets
- invade Americans' personal
privacy to a degree never before tolerated
- deprive Americans of their
property rights
- violate the religious freedom
of Americans whose beliefs make it impossible for them to comply
- cost the American economy far
more than it will deliver
So what is this program and how did it develop?
History
The concept of an electronic national animal identification
system was started back in the early 1990s, by technology companies seeking to
expand their market, and large agricultural entities seeking to protect their
ability to sell their mass produced meat on the world market.
Their efforts culminated in 2002, when the
National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA) proposed that the USDA develop
a "national animal identification system" (NAIS). While NIAA may
sound like a public interest organization, its membership reads like a who's who
in industrial agriculture and technology, including entities such as Cargill
Pork, Tyson, National Pork Producers Council, and Global Vet Link.
Notably, the NIAA developed the national animal
identification system more than a year and a half before the first case of Mad Cow was
found in the U.S.
Over the course of three years, USDA and NIAA worked together to develop the
NAIS and inform the large-scale livestock producer community, while ignoring
hundreds of thousands of people who will be affected.
The Federal Plan
After it took up the task from Industry, the
USDA developed the plan through working groups, made up of representatives from
government agencies, large agribusinesses, and technology companies. Notably
absent from these workgroups were any significant representatives of pet
owners, recreational animal owners, and small farmers and ranchers. Much of the
work of these workgroups has yet to be completed, yet industry is rushing to
make this program mandatory and implemented nationwide, without regard to the
price to be paid by consumers and the average animal owner.
On April 25, 2005, the USDA released "Draft
Program Standards" ("Standards") and a "Draft Strategic
Plan" ("Plan") for the NAIS. The Standards and Plan have no
authority in law. The USDA has stated that the Animal Health Protection Act of
2002 is the source of its authority. (Plan at 9.) But that statute addresses
only the import and export of animals, interstate travel, quarantines areas,
and related programs. Two Congresses have tried, but failed to pass legislation
that would amend the Act to provide for a mandatory electronic tracking system
for individual head of livestock. USDA is
operating without authority from Congress. Currently, there are
three bills in Congress, trying to give postdated authority to this assault on
our freedom. The existence of these bills proves that there is no Congressional
authority for USDA to establish a mandatory animal identification system.
USDA, various state agencies, and many private
companies who have vested financial interests in seeing NAIS adopted have tried
to present an image of the NAIS as a sensible, practical plan to address animal
disease. A review of the government's plan, however, shows quite the opposite.
The current NAIS Plan provides:
- Premises registration: Every person who
owns even one
horse, cow, pig, chicken, sheep, goat, deer, elk, bison, or virtually any
livestock animal, will be forced to register their home, including owner's
name, address, and telephone number, and keyed to Global Positioning
System coordinates, in a government database under a 7-digit
"premises ID number." (Standards, pp. 3-4, 10-12; Plan, p. 5.)
Additionally, pet owners who own one parakeet, canary, cockatiel, etc. as
owners of "exotic fowl" have been targeted for mandatory
inclusion in this system. If you buy a pet bird after this system is put
into effect, it probably will already have an Animal Identification
Number. It will be registered to you, and you must register your premises
(wherever you keep the bird). If you move the bird off your
"premises" for any reason, or it dies, or it produces more
birds, you must report such activity to the federal government within 24
hours. In Texas,
there was a staff recommendation to hold off on mandatory registration of
exotic fowl kept as pets, until a disease was suspected, then they will
implement mandatory registration. However, that recommendation is on hold
until TAHC decides what path it will take.
- Animal Identification: Every animal
will have to be assigned a 15-digit ID number by the government. The form
of ID will most likely be a tag or microchip containing a Radio Frequency
Identification Device (RFID), designed to be read from a distance. (Plan,
p. 10; Standards, pp. 6, 12, 20, 27-28.) The plan may also include collecting
the DNA of every animal and/or a retinal scan of every animal. (Plan,
p.13.) Despite the announcement that a federal mandatory database might be
put off, USDA maintains detailed information on the structure of these
15-digit ID numbers as of mid-March 2006, ostensibly so that ID
manufacturers could normalize their numbering systems. Some animals such
as pigs and poultry, owned by large producers, may have a
"group" identifier assigned instead of an individual number for
each animal, as described below.
- While some state agencies and
industry actors have pointed to the provision for "group
numbers" for poultry and swine, small farmers do not manage their
animals in ways that would qualify. Group or lot identification can only
be used where groups of animals are managed together from birth to death
and never commingled with other animals. (Standards pp.5-6.) This
provision is tailored for confinement poultry operations, not pastured
poultry operations. If animals do not meet the requirements for group
identification, they will have to be individually identified.
- Animal Tracking: The owner will
be required to report: the birthdate of an animal, the application of
every animal's ID tag, every time an animal leaves or enters the property,
every time an animal loses a tag, every time a tag is replaced, the
slaughter or death of an animal, or if any animal is missing. Also, every
time an animal goes onto or off of another person's premises, a report
would be required, showing that the tagged animal had been on each of
these other premises. Such events must be reported within 24 hours.
(Standards, pp. 12-13, 17-21.)
- Third parties, such as
veterinarians, will be required to report "sightings" of animals
who do not have ID numbers. (Standards, p. 25.) In other words, if a
farmer or rancher calls a vet to their property to treat an animal, and
the vet finds any animal without the mandatory 15-digit computer-readable
ID, the vet may be required to report that non-compliance.
- There are no exceptions; under
the USDA plan; livestock owners will be forced to register and report even
if they raise animals only for their own food or keep horses for draft or
for transportation.
- The USDA will exercise
"enforcement" against livestock farmers who don't comply.
(Standards, p. 7; Plan, p. 17.) As an example of what can be expected, the
proposed Texas
regulations for mandatory premises registration provide for fines of up to
$1,000 per day and criminal penalties.
