NAIS is not dead….

[Gabe Ayers]

This is a post by a group that is resisting this dumb idea that will be a further burden on the sustainability of small farmers everywhere. Please help with this cause DAP people. Thanks, Jason

Ag Bill Link NAIS to school lunch program
Posted by Judith McGeary at 2008-06-21 13:00:32
US Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), chairwoman of the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, has inserted pro-NAIS provisions into the Agriculture Appropriations bill for 2009. According to her press release, the bill would require USDA to purchase meat products for the School Lunch Program from livestock premises registered with National Animal Identification System beginning in July 2009. This is a back-door method for mandating NAIS through the power of the purse strings. The bill also provides a total NAIS funding level of $14.5 million or about $4.8 million above 2008.

We must stop these provisions from going any further!

The full House Appropriations Committee will meet to discuss the Agriculture Appropriations bill on Thursday, June 26. After that, it will go to the full House. So we need everyone to call the Committee members and their own Representatives as soon as possible! We also need calls to the Senate Appropriations Committee, to keep them from following DeLauro’s lead.

Take Action

1) Call or fax your US Representative. You can look up who represents you at http://www.congress.org or call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 or toll-free at 866-340-9281.

2) Call or fax the members of the House Appropriations Committee who come from your State. The members are listed here When you see a member who comes from your state, click on his or her name to get contact information.

3) Call or fax your Senator if he or she is on the Senate Appropriations Committee. The members are listed here.

With each person, ask to speak to the staffer who handles appropriations. If you get their voice mail, leave the following message, or something in your own words that makes the same points:

MESSAGE: My name is ____. I am a constituent [or live in your state, if you aren’t in their district]. I am calling because the House Agriculture Appropriations subcommittee has inserted language requiring the School Lunch Program to only buy meat from farms registered in the National Animal Identification System. I am against NAIS, and I do not want it to be tied to school lunch programs. NAIS, which tracks live animals, will not improve food safety because most food safety problems start at the slaughterhouse and food processing facilities. Funding for NAIS, particularly any mandatory NAIS, needs to be stopped. Please call me back at _____.

When you talk to the staffer, be sure to make the same points as in the message, and expand on them with some of the talking points below.

For more information, contact the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance at info@farmandranchfreedom.org or 866-687-6452.

Talking Points

In addition to the message above, here are some more talking points about why the NAIS provisions in the Agriculture Appropriations bill should be taken out. Pick one or two to focus on, and put them in your own words!

* This bill uses the government’s power to economically coerce farmers into NAIS. That is not a “voluntary” program.

* This bill throws good money after bad, supporting a program that is not sound economically or scientifically.

* USDA has presented no science to back up its claims that NAIS will address livestock diseases.

* The USDA has never completed a cost/benefit analysis to show that NAIS is worthwhile.

* NAIS will not improve food safety. The massive Hallmark/Westland beef recall this past year was caused by the slaughterhouse employees’ failure to follow existing regulations for handling “downer” cows. Mandating NAIS on cattle producers will not make anybody obey the laws we already have.

* NAIS will not help Americans compete in the world market. If it is mandatory, or even adopted by most producers, those who participate will not get premiums for their meat.

* Pouring more money into the program is a waste of precious tax dollars that could be better spent on safety inspections at packing and processing plants, where most food contamination occurs.

* Using the school lunch program to force farmers into NAIS undermines the growing farm-to-school program, which helps children get fresh, local, and sustainably raised foods. Local farmers should not be forced into an unpopular program that has nothing to do with food quality or safety in order to provide food for our children.

* The claim that USDA has achieved 33% of its Premises Registration goal is wrong. USDA computes its percentage of premises registered based on farmers who answer the agriculture census. Hundreds of thousands of additional horse owners, families with a few chickens, suburbanites with a pet pot-bellied pig, and others like them are technically covered by NAIS, but USDA ignores them when it reports its supposed successes to Congress. The vast majority of people who will be impacted by NAIS either oppose it or are still unaware of it!

* NAIS has never been specifically approved by Congress. This massive program, which will impact millions of people, should be addressed through full and open debate, not snuck in through appropriations.

DeLauro’s press release is posted here. See pages 6-7 for discussion of the NAIS provisions in the bill.

DeLauro has supported tracking farms for some time. Her food safety bill from 2007 included tracking all food from its origin to consumer’s plates. Her press release on the school lunch initiative states, “We will also strengthen Animal ID and the National School Lunch Program including language to provide market-based incentives to strengthen both the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) and the National School Lunch Program.”

The press release makes it clear that DeLauro supports moving the entire NAIS program forward: “The bill’s report details specific implementation milestones to shine the spotlight on APHIS’s delivery of NAIS. The Committee worked in consultation with the agency, and we largely derived these performance measures from the agency’s own NAIS business plan. We are going to move well beyond tracking the number of premises registered and follow more closely how APHIS is using the money. The NAIS milestones include (1) 48-hour traceability standards for specific species; and (2) program administration deliverables.”

The actual bill language is not yet available. We will send a follow up alert when it is.

This is going to be another hard fight to win. Several key committee members in both the House and the Senate support a mandatory NAIS, and will be glad for anything that moves us towards that. So we need everyone to call! Tell your friends and neighbors what is happening, and ask them to call also. Let your voice be heard!

Judith McGeary
Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance
866-687-6452

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[Gabe Ayers]

This is a cut copy paste from the RH front porch, it may be good news…

USDA Ordered to Release NAIS Data
by: Karen Briggs
July 09 2008, Article # 12239

Agricultural journalist Mary-Louise Zanoni has succeeded in keeping the USDA from applying Privacy Act safeguards to information it has collected from livestock owners as part of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). These safeguards would have restricted access to the information by journalists as well as the livestock owners whose information might be included without their knowledge.

In a landmark ruling June 4, Federal District Judge for the District of Columbia, Emmet Sullivan, suspended indefinitely the USDA’s plans to protect the information under the 1974 Privacy Act.

The information in question is a list of farms and ranches collected through voluntary premises identification since 2004 and potentially through other means which sources say amount to data mining. In her suit, Zanoni sought a restraining order and alleged that not only has the USDA collected premises information from landowners who did not voluntarily submit that information, but it has failed to remove that information from the list when requested to do so by the landowners.

Len Brown, of the law firm Clymer & Musser of Lancaster, Pa., represented Zanoni in the case. He commented, “It boils down to a database created by the U.S. government in an inappropriate way. This created huge hurdles for journalists trying to write about NAIS.

“The rules say people being placed in a database such as this need to be notified, but the USDA has admitted to data mining from sources like state veterinarians and avian flu records, even entry lists from county fairs,” Brown stated.

Although Zanoni’s action against the USDA garnered a fairly swift response from the federal District Court, Brown said they’re still trying to get the USDA to release the database.

“We filed a motion for summary judgment on July 2,” Brown said “The USDA will have until August 9 to respond, after which we expect a decision within 60 days.

“Stopping them from converting to a Privacy Act was a really significant step,” Brown added, “but the USDA is still not responding as we think they should.

“I certainly think it’s adding to people’s suspicions about NAIS,” he continued. “And it begs the question, ‘who at the USDA did not consider the Privacy Act in 2004 and 2005?’ Someone will likely have to answer for that.”

[danb]

I’ve been waiting for this. The Cherry Creek sale barn in Cherry Creek, NY (run by Empire Livestock Marketing) has a note to Pennsylvania herds in a ad I found in our local paper: “PA dairy cattle, feeders and beef replacements may now be able to receive health charts at the sale barn with a PREMISE ID NUMBER. This service will be easier and save you, the consignor, money. Call the market for details if you plan on consigning.”
This is the government’s way of forcing the “voluntary” program down our throats. Sure glad I don’t sell much at sale barns!

[Gabe Ayers]

Received this email tonight:

July 15, 2008 from nonais.org
USDA Sued To Stop NAIS

Legal Defense Fund Files Suit to Stop Animal ID Program
Suit Targets USDA and Michigan Department of Agriculture

Falls Church, Virginia, (July 14, 2008) – Attorneys for the Farm-to-Consumer
Legal Defense Fund today filed suit in the U.S. District Court – District of
Columbia to stop the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the
Michigan Department of Agriculture (MDA) from implementing the National
Animal Identification System (NAIS), a plan to electronically track every
livestock animal in the country.

The MDA has implemented the first two stages of NAIS – property registration
and animal identification – for all cattle and farmers across the state as
part of a mandatory bovine tuberculosis disease control program required by
a grant from the USDA.

The suit asks the court to issue an injunction to stop the implementation of
NAIS at either the state or federal levels by any state or federal agency.
If successful, the suit would halt the program nationwide.

“We think that current disease reporting procedures and animal tracking
methods provide the kind of information health officials need to respond to
animal disease events,” explained Fund President Taaron Meikle.

“At a time when the job of protecting our food safety is woefully
underfunded, the USDA has spent over $118 million on just the beginning
stages of a so-called voluntary program that ultimately seeks to register
every horse, chicken, cow, goat, sheep, pig, llama, alpaca or other
livestock animal in a national database-more than 120 million animals. It’s
a program that only a bureaucrat could love.” she added.

Meikle noted that existing programs for diseases such as tuberculosis,
brucellosis and scrapie together with state laws on branding and the
existing record keeping by sales barns and livestock shows provide the
mechanisms needed for tracking any disease outbreaks.

She said the suit charges that USDA has never published rules regarding
NAIS, in violation of the Federal Administrative Procedures Act; has never
performed an Environmental Impact Statement or an Environmental Assessment
as required by the National Environmental Policy Act; is in violation of the
Regulatory Flexibility Act that requires the USDA to analyze proposed rules
for their impact on small entities and local governments; and violates
religious freedoms guaranteed by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

“Other mandatory implementations, which weave NAIS into existing regulatory
fabric and programs, have occurred in the States of Wisconsin and Indiana
where premises registration has been made mandatory; in drought-stricken
North Carolina and Tennessee, where farmers have been required to register
their premises in order to obtain hay relief; and in Colorado where state
fairs are requiring participants to register their premises under NAIS,”
explained Judith McGeary, a member of the Farm-to-Consumer Fund board and
the executive director of the Farm and Rancher Freedom Alliance.

“We are asking the court to immediately halt implementation of the program
nationwide before more farmers and ranchers are strong-armed into
participating in a program that the USDA has called voluntary.”

McGeary also questioned the accuracy of the existing database noting that an
attempt by the USDA to make the information in the NAIS database subject to
Privacy Act safeguards thereby removing them from public scrutiny was
suspended indefinitely in a ruling last month by the same federal court that
will hear arguments in the current suit. That suit had been filed by a
journalist seeking access to the database to determine its accuracy.

About The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund: The Fund defends the rights
and broadens the freedoms of sustainable farmers, and protects consumer
access to local, nutrient-dense foods. Concerned citizens can support the
Fund by joining at farmtoconsumer.org or by contacting the Fund at
703-208-FARM. The Fund’s sister organization, the Farm-to-Consumer
Foundation (farmtoconsumerfoundation.org), works to support farmers engaged
in sustainable farm stewardship and promote consumer access to local,
nutrient-dense food.

Editor’s Note: A copy of the suit filed against the USDA and MDA is
available at farmtoconsumerfoundation.org

###

Contacts:

Taaron G. Meikle
President, Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund and Farm-to-Consumer
Foundation
703-537-8372
tgmeikle@aol.com

Brian Cummings
Cummings & Company LLC
214-295-7463
brian@cummingspr.com

Susan Barackman Morning Light Studio
Paris, Texas 75462
esbee@1starnet.com
now on the net at … http://susanbarackman.freeservers.com

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