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NATIONAL ANIMAL IDENTIFICATION
SYSTEM UPDATE
March 1, 2007
The following article
was written and copyrighted by Mary Zanoni, PhD (Cornell),
JD (Yale), Founder and Executive Director, Farm for Life,
P.O. Box 501, Canton, NY 13617, (315) 265-2800. It is being
posted on NPGA’s website with the written permission of the
author:
Monday, February 12,
2007
“Joe Cattleman” Scores
Decisively in Round One Against the NCBA: In a Rare Example
of a True “Free Market,” Nobody is Buying the Ridiculous
Government/Corporate Scheme for Tracking Everything that
Walks, Flies, Swims or Crawls
(But the Fight is Far
from Over - Get Ready for Round Two)
by Mary Zanoni
This morning, several
people have sent me the article that appeared on
CattleNetwork late last Friday afternoon, “Animal Tracking
System Sidelined for Lack of Support,”
http://www.cattlenetwork.com/content.asp?contentid=104957.
(Kathryn Russell of Virginia Independent Consumers and
Farmers Association [VICFA,
www.vicfa.net] was the first to draw attention to the
article, with Sharon Zecchinelli and Doreen Hannes helping
to distribute it to the NAIS opposition community.) The
article, by Les Aldrich of the Dow Jones Newswire, reports
that the U.S. Animal Identification Organization (USAIO) has
been “suspended for lack of interest and financing.” The
USAIO suspended its operations on January 31, 2007, pretty
much because “no producer data was ever entered into the
system” and “it became obsolete before it ever got started.”
To understand the
significance of this development, let’s briefly review the
history of the USAIO. One of the chief drivers of the
development of the dream/nightmare (depending on your point
of view) of a National Animal Identification System (NAIS)
has always been the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association,
because the NCBA coveted the vast wealth to be gained if
they could secure a monopoly over the “animal tracking
database” (ATD). The ATD was the NAISty beast which, if the
NCBA and USDA had had their way, every animal owner in the
U.S. would have had to feed with reporting fees every time
any “livestock” were moved from place to place, sold,
bought, died, birthed, what-have-you. (In the original plan,
“livestock” included everything down to the level of farmed
fish, shrimp, and clams - no kidding, it was all in the
USDA’s Draft Strategic Plan for NAIS, published in April
2006.)
Now, the NCBA would
have loved to have the ATD all to its own self, but whoops,
there were certain obvious legal anticompetitive problems
with that, plus it was likely to cause a wholesale revolt of
livestock owners (particularly cattlemen), and even some
pretty hefty rival livestock corporate interests were not
happy with it, since they got no pieces of the ATD pie.
Thus, the NCBA morphed
its anticompetitive animal tracking plot into the so-called
“nonprofit” USAIO by early 2006. Then the so-called
“nonprofit” USAIO “partnered” with America’s
Monopolists-in-Chief at - big surprise - Microsoft - to
launch a so-called “industry-led, multispecies animal
tracking database” with much fanfare in a press release on
March 1, 2006.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/mar06/03-01AnimalTrackingPR.mspx
The problem, however,
was similar to that which Microsoft is now having with its
Vista operating system - nobody wants to buy. Animal-owner
resistance prevented the USDA from imposing “mandatory” NAIS
on its preferred schedule, and the agency now is saying it
only wants a “voluntary” NAIS. Legitimate “volunteers” have
been few and far between, and the program has provoked
outrage because the USDA has egged-on many states to fulfill
their “premises ID” quotas for USDA grant funding by
data-theft from pre-existing state livestock programs. In
other words, many states have placed animal-owner records
into the USDA premises information database without the
prior knowledge or consent of the animal owners. These
animal owners do not even suspect that they have been
co-opted into the so-called “voluntary” premises
registration system until they receive a letter from their
state agriculture department “congratulating” them on their
new premises ID number. Since many of these “forced
volunteers” are sworn enemies of NAIS, their bitter
reactions to forced participation - while totally justified
- have not been pretty, and have not gone unnoticed by some
of their elected representatives.
So, in a marked
contrast to the hoopla surrounding the announcement of the
USAIO’s animal-tracking partnership in March 2006, now, less
than a year later, the USAIO quietly slinks over the
horizon, its Jan. 31, 2007 suspension of operations not
reported in the livestock media until over a week later.
But, as the antiNAIS
movement has seen so clearly in the past, this won’t be the
end of it. While the USDA has been murmuring “voluntary,
voluntary,” states such as Kentucky and Washington have
recently launched “sneak attacks” to try to impose NAIS
against the will of farmers and animal owners through
minimally-publicized rulemaking proceedings. Livestock
owners may not yet be safe from a sneak attack by the USDA
itself, in the form of a possible “interim rule” that could
impose NAIS with no prior opportunity for comment or
objection. (See
http://nonais.org/index.php/2007/01/22/bad-premonition/
for more on the possibility of an “interim rule.”)
State-level affiliates of the Farm Bureau and the National
Cattlemen - and their legions of professional lobbyists -
quickly have mounted smear campaigns against
farmer-supported “no NAIS” legislation in many states.
But after decades of
farmers and ranchers getting the boot-heel from the NCBA and
its industrial-agriculture friends, winning Round One is at
least a start.
* * * * *
Copyright 2007 by Mary
Zanoni. The above article may be distributed solely for
personal and non-commercial use without prior permission
from the author, so long as proper credit is given, the
article is reproduced without changes or deletions, and this
copyright notice is displayed. Any other distribution or
republication requires the author’s permission in writing
and requests for such permission should be directed to the
author at 315-386-3199 or
mlz@slic.com.
In granting permission
for NPGA to post this article on its website, Mary Zanoni
stated: “Yes, by all means, you may reprint my piece. It
would be good, however, to emphasize that the USDA and the
states continue to move forward with more and more involved
and complex programs for animal and farm tracking.”
Ray Hoyt
NPGA President
NAIS Coordinator
NPGA HER Committee Member
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