From: Truth and Progress e-newsletter-Shades of Blue and Green, April ,1, 2007

6. Here's the real VMD diary, and the real title is "Pissed Off Farmers Fight Back."

When you start poking around food policy, you quickly find many laws on the books that simply shouldn't exist - laws equivalent in stupidity to Medicare's inability to negotiate drug prices. For example, many states have "veggie libel laws" (the law the got Oprah Winfrey in trouble), forbidding citizens from badmouthing food and shifting the burden of proof to make it easier to sue for libel. Then there's the idiotic caveat rBGH-free dairy must include, telling consumers that the government sees no difference between milk from cows treated with rBGH and milk from those without.

You read this stuff, and you think "Why doesn't somebody revolt?" Finally, some pissed off farmers are doing exactly that! The two issues at stake the farmers are fighting are the ban on testing every single cow for mad cow (vs. the 1% or so of cows that are tested now) and the mandatory adoption of the National Animal ID System (NAIS).

7. Yes, You CAN Test Every Cow For Mad Cow... Maybe
For some background on mad cow, see my previous diary here. For more info, I recommend the book Mad Cow USA by John Stauber & Sheldon Rampton.

Previously, if a meatpacker or farmer wanted to test every single cow for mad cow, he or she was not permitted to do so. You might wonder why, because such a conscientious step (at no cost to anyone but the meatpacker or farmer) seems like a good thing. And, after all, we supposedly live in a free country.

The mere thought of testing every single cow for mad cow scares the  #$%^ out of Big Ag. For one thing, they're after the bottom line, and the tests are expensive. If testing every cow becomes the new standard, Big Ag's bottom line is in trouble. Perhaps more frightening is the possibility that testing reveals new cases of mad cow disease in our country. The economic fallout from a worldwide panic over American beef would be devastating. It's much easier to follow our current Mad Cow policy, which some call "Don't Look, Don't Find."

Since the USDA lives in the pants of Big Ag, it refuses to permit individual meatpackers or farmers to test every single animal. The USDA claims it has the authority to regulate the tests because they are used in the treatment of disease. The catch here is that animals can only be tested for Mad Cow if they are already dead. The only treatment tested animals are going to get is maybe a little A-1 steak sauce or some ketchup.

8. Michigan Farmers Resist NAIS
NAIS stands for the National Animal ID System. It came onto my radar shortly before the 2006 election, when I received an email from someone I now consider a friend (albeit an online one, as we've never met in person), who was working on agriculture issues in Missouri. NAIS was HUGE there, she told me, and rural voters were PISSED OFF. People who might normally never consider voting for "the party of abortion and gay marriage" were listening to Claire McCaskill as she promised to defund NAIS if elected (her opponent, Talent, was on the record as being VERY pro-NAIS).

Not long afterwards, Elfling wrote a terrific diary clearly laying out all of the issues farmers and other Americans had with NAIS. The reasons for opposition mentioned in the diary match exactly the reasons cited by Michigan farmers in current news articles: 1) the USDA's method of controlling disease by killing entire herds of animals (sometimes without compensation for the animals' owners); 2) the economic advantages the system gives to factory farmers, putting even more small farmers out of business; and 3) infringement on privacy.

Unfortunately, Elfling's diary scrolled off the page before too many people got a chance to read it (which is disappointing, as Elfling's diaries are consistently wonderful), so I took up the topic by interviewing local farmers for a VMD diary just before the election. The election came and went, but NAIS didn't vanish along with the Republican majority.

 In case you missed the earlier diaries, I'll quickly go over how I see the pros and cons of the NAIS program. There is no doubt that our country should improve food safety and, in doing so, address the risks of mad cow disease, scrapie (a mad cow-like disease in sheep), bird flu, and any other animal disease that may also threaten humans.

This risk for a widespread epidemic occurs most on large factory farms, where animals live in crowded conditions, often in their own manure, and as factory farmed animals are slaughtered and processed, where ground beef from one sick cow may end up in countless hamburgers that are served all over the country. Remember how the spinach grown in a 50-acre field in California resulted in 205 documented (4000 estimated) cases of sickness from E. coli in 26 states? Problems on that scale are the ones that need fixing, and far be it from our government to suggest a solution as logical as buying food locally from organic family farmers.

NAIS offers itself as a solution to the problems of industrialized agriculture, but it's only a weak band-aid at best. It does not fix any of the circumstances that lead to our food safety problems, nor does it improve regulation within meat processing plants, where microbial testing for bacteria occurs far too seldom and (as mentioned above) the government actually tries to forbid meatpackers from testing _too much_ for mad cow. What good is it if we track the animals if we still don't know which ones are the sick ones, and even if we did, the USDA doesn't have the authority to mandate a recall?

On the other hand, small scale producers often know their customers personally, and they are held to high quality standards by the mere fact that their customers can see how the animals are treated on their farms (or, at a farmer's market, they can ask). If all hell broke loose and a small farmer sold tainted meat for some reason, he or she could easily track down most of his or her customers - and given that most sales occurred within a small area, the local news could pick up the story and the problem can be controlled without damaging the businesses of farmers, grocers, restaurants, etc, all over the nation. Last, NAIS is intended to track animal movements, but for many small farmers, their animals spend their entire lives in the exact same place.

If small farmers went along with NAIS, despite their lack of need for it, they would face high costs that increase their competitive disadvantage against factory farms. Already family farmers lose their farms every single day in this country - can you imagine what it would be like if the government made it even more difficult for them to squeak by? In my opinion, NAIS is constructed to look like its doing something about food safety (without actually doing anything) while simultaneously wiping out all of Big Ag's competition from small farmers.

The implementation of NAIS has led to much confusion as it began as a "voluntary" program with an ever-changing date to become mandatory. Currently, a few states are pioneering mandatory implementation, and Michigan is among them. David Gumpert of _Business Week_ has been following the story.

The Michigan Department of Agriculture (MDA) requires that all cows wear radio frequency ID (RFID) tags, mandatory as of March 1 of this year. It might sound like a simple rule until you hear what Brad Clark, a Michigan farmer who is selling all of his cows instead of complying, has to say:

Cows lose tags like crazy. They get caught in tree limbs. You get an 1,800-pound bull that doesn't want to be tagged, it's an ordeal.

That quote came from a Business Week article called "Farmers Say No To Animal Tags." In the same article, another Michigan farmer, John Dutcher, says:

We sell everything we produce direct to people in the area, and it's all by word of mouth. Technically speaking, if I slaughter a cow, I am supposed to notify the MDA. I'm not going to do that. I guess I'm going to be busted someday because I'm not going to keep records.

Better yet is Greg Niewendorp, who pledged to resist all MDA orders relating to NAIS. Now that the March 1 deadline took effect, making NAIS compliance mandatory, Greg's already had his first opportunity to take his resistance out for a test drive. Some MDA reps showed up on his farm to test his cows for bovine tuberculosis and he refused to let them. He told them they better not come back unless it's with a search warrant.

MDA responded by quarantining his farm, which won't hurt his business any because the cows are born, live, and die all on his farm. Unfortunately, his refusal over bovine TB-testing may come with some unpleasant legal consequences, like a felony charge, up to 5 years in prison, and up to a $50,000 fine.

The big question now is: What will happen next? If you are as pissed off as these farmers, don't hesitate to let your representatives know. In the case of NAIS, be sure to contact your state representatives as well as your federal ones. Congress can defund NAIS or otherwise cripple it on a national level, but it's the state departments of agriculture that make the decisions on whether or not to confront your state's pissed off farmers. And, as always, vote with your fork! Support small farmers by buying from them.