EXEMPTIONS?

But I’ve just got a few chickens and a horse.  Not me, right?

Wrong.  The NAIS plans provide no exemptions whatever.  One chicken, one horse, one cow, one sheep, one goat, one bison, one llama, one alpaca, one turkey, one duck -- all must register, premises & animals.

GOODBYE PROPERTY RIGHTS

The NAIS abolishes private property rights in farms and in animals. The NAIS, run by a branch of the USDA, considers “your” animals to be not yours, but part of “the national herd.”  Plainly, they are right.  If they can force you to register your farm and your animals, you do not own them.  They own them because they control them.  You are only inventorying property & animals for their true owner, the federal government.

MANDATORY MEANS MANDATORY

The NAIS’s schedule fixes January 2008 for “mandatory” enforcement.  Mandatory means “forced” and “enforcement” means “putting into force.”  Not of your own free will.  The government will fine you, put you in jail, or seize your animals for raising animals without registering them with the government -- “raising animals without a licence,” I reckon they’ll call it.  That’s right, 6,500 years of historical right will be abolished.  >From now on, you’ll be breaking the law for being a farmer without government permission.

What’s more, “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 co-ordinates of one’s home and the RFID of one’s animal[s] to the USDA database.”  (Zanoni, 3)

 MORE GOOD NEWS

Who will pay for NAIS?  You will.  It does not favour the small farmer, but corporations with huge budgets.  These conglomerates get to write off government registration fees, etc., but the write off means almost nothing to small farmers, who must first come up with the money to comply.  The NAIS is free now, but will not be in the future.  On their website, the NAIS states, “Even with public funding, there will be costs to producers.”  There’s a time tax, too.  States, tribes, producers, managers of livestock shows and events, market operators, processing plants, service providers and third parties will all have to provide labour for this system. 

AND TAXES?

By registering with the NAIS you open yourself for future taxes.  By registering your car, you pay taxes.  By registering yourself as the owner of your home, you pay taxes.  By registering yourself with a social security number, you pay taxes.  Taxes for being a farmer and taxes on your animals will come, too.

THOSE FOR AND THOSE AGAINST

Tennessee (and probably your state, too) is now implementing the voluntary premises identification section of this plan.  In your state you’ll see the Farm Bureau, the cattlemen’s association, and the extension agents lining up.  With new government programs comes new government money.  They’ll push NAIS compliance by holding out carrots of new money available only to those who register.

CAN WE DEFEAT NAIS?

You bet.  There’s still hope we can defeat NAIS. 

Dr. Mary Zanoni, a lawyer from New York, has filed official comments with the USDA Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) decrying the NAIS.  She has also founded an organisation – Farm for Life. In her brilliantly argued statement filed in June 2005, she put this whole scheme in perspective.

“The security of America’s food supply and the resilience of livestock in the face of diseases are best served by decentralising and dispersing food production and processing, and breeding and maintaining livestock.  If more citizens could depend on food raised and processed within, say, 100 miles of their homes, the danger of large-scale disruptions would be minimised, the costs of transport would be less affected by volatile fuel prices, and any food-borne diseases … would be contained by the system’s natural geographic limits.  Similarly, if animals, such as cattle, for example, are kept in small herds of, say, ten to a hundred animals, infectious diseases will have much more difficulty in spreading beyond a discrete geographical area.

WHAT TO DO?

State cattlemen’s associations may be backing this idea, but chances are their members won’t.  Chances are, the members have no idea what’s going on. How many farmers -- not “agribusinessmen” -- have you ever met that would think registering a chicken with the government is a good idea?  Talk to them.  Encourage them not to sign up their premises.  “The USDA is using farmers’ supposed willingness to enter a ‘voluntary’ program as a justification for making the program mandatory,” says Zanoni. 

This is the old government game where a pitiful, haggard, selfless government employee pleas to the camera, “Look, all these other farmers have signed up on their own because they’re good Americans and it’s just a few renegades ( read the majority of the population) holding out.  If we’re gonna be safe, we’ve got to make this mandatory because we just can’t talk sense to these people who, after all, we’re only trying to protect.  It’s for their own good”