Protesting NAIS - Information

Quote: "Not since Prohibition has any government agency attempted to enshrine in law a system, which so thoroughly stigmatizes and burdens common, everyday behavior and is so certain to meet with huge resistance from the citizens it unjustly targets." This quote comes from an article entitled "Animal ID Makers in Hog Heaven" by Mary Zanoni, Ph.D. (Cornell), J.D. (Yale), the Executive Director of Farm for Life™

So, exactly what is the NAIS? NAIS is a Violation of our Constitutional Rights! A good description below is taken from a website organized by Walter Jeffries, a small homesteader with a big heart and a loud voice, who aims to protect American homesteaders from this blatant violation of our constitutional rights by the USDA and corporate producers. His website is located at: http://nonais.org/

The National Animal ID program was originally designed to give the big beef producers help in getting export markets which required disease controls. The idea is that every single livestock animal in the United States will be identified and tagged. All livestock animal movements will be tracked, logged and reported to the government. The benefit is to the big factory farms who probably do need this type of regulation. They get to do single ID’s for large groups of animals. Small farmers, pet owners and homesteaders will have to tag and track every single animal.

There are no exceptions - even small farms that sell direct to local consumers will be required to pay the fees and file all the paper work on all their animals. Even horse, llama and other pet owners will be required to participate in NAIS. Homesteaders who raise their own meat and grandma with her one egg hen will also have to register their homes as ‘farm premises’ and obtain a Premise ID, tag all their animals and submit all the paperwork and fees. Absurd? Yes - There are no exceptions under the current NAIS plan. The USDA has slipped this plan in the back door without any legislation. This is going to be very expensive and guess who is going to pay for it in higher food prices… You!

Can NAIS affect me? Yes, it can!

NAIS will help some big corporations, like the big beef producers, by opening up export markets for them to other countries.

NAIS will hurt a lot of different people including consumers, pet owners, children, homesteaders and small farmers.

Consumers will face higher meat prices under NAIS because the cost of producing meat will go up with the addition of fees to the government to support the NAIS program. The cost of other foods, like vegetables, will likely also go up as well since the manure from meat animals is used to fertilize the soil to grow better crops. Most importantly, NAIS will result in many small farms going out of business. The consolidation of the meat industry into fewer, big, agri-biz producers means they will have more control of the market and be able to charge higher prices for the same product.

Pet owners will be forced to register their family horse, pet sheep, llamas and other ‘livestock’ that aren’t part of the food chain. This will cost them money and be a hassle with paperwork and premise ID fees each year. Furthermore, every time you want to take your pet to the vet, on a trail ride or even just cross the road you’ll have to submit paperwork with the government and probably pay a fee. Every time. In time, they plan to do the same for pet dogs and cats. See PAWS legislation and the Vermont Pet Merchant bill that requires you to register as a pet dealer if your cat has kittens or your dog has puppies.

Children who are in 4-H or Future Farmers of America will have to register their parents house as a farm and get a Premise ID as well as paying the annual fees and doing paper work every time an animal is bought, sold, shown or moved. This will also stifle county fairs which are already on fragile footing. Figure you’ll not be seeing livestock at fairs of the future - there will just be the midway and amusement rides that are poorly inspected, but no animals.

Homesteaders, people who grow some of their own food, will have to register with the government as a farm and obtain a Premise ID. They’ll also have to pay the annual fees associated with that and fill out the paperwork on all of their livestock. Every time you have chicks, goats, piglets or other animals born you’ll need to register it with the government. Every time an animal dies you’ll have to register it with the government. Got a predator problem? Expect to fill out a lot of paperwork. Have an animal escape the fence and cross the road or go onto a neighbor’s property? Fill out more forms and the neighbor may have to fill out forms, too. Animals come on to your property uninvited? More forms. And no, there are no exceptions. Every livestock animal must be registered, tagged and tracked from birth to death.

Small Farmers who sell direct to their customers will be devastated. Small farmers already work at higher costs than the big factory farms. Under NAIS they’ll have to identify each and every animal at a high cost because they can’t use the group identification techniques of the big Agri-Biz corporations. The big guys do all-in/all-out animal management. Each mass group of animals are of one gene stock and the same age. The factory farms need only apply for one ID to cover the entire group of thousands of animals. Small, traditional-style farmers have many, genetically diverse animals of different ages on their farms. Each individual animal will be required to have an ID. The result is that the cost of farming will go up greatly for small farmers. This is likely to be the final nail in the coffin of small farming. Developers will be over joyed as they buy up farm land at rock bottom prices to divide up into condos and strip malls. Rural America will turn dingy with pavement. Gone will be the fields, pastures and meadows filled with grazing livestock. Vermont can kiss it’s tourist industry good-bye.

Sugar Mountain Farm Customers who buy our pastured pork, pigs, piglets, lambs and chickens will be looking at higher prices because it will cost us more time and money to fill out all the government’s paperwork and pay their ridiculous new fees. I would estimate that this will raise the price by $10 to $15 per animal, possibly more since the full fee structure is not yet known. More over, if you’re buying live animals like laying hens, lambs or piglets then you’ll have to get a Premise ID from the government for your home, pay the annual Premise ID fee and do any paperwork for each and every livestock animal you have as well as paying the associated animal fees. Currently you save money and get better meat by raising it yourself or buying our pasture raised products. Under NAIS you’ll pay more money for the same thing without any benefits.

Big Agri-Biz are the clear winners under NAIS. They will get expanded export markets and legal liability protection at minimal cost. Because small farmers will be forced out of business due to all the additional fees and paperwork the big Agri-Biz corporations will gain more domestic market, bigger monopolies, more market control and higher profits. They’re salivating at the prospect. Not only that, but it will be harder for individuals to raise their own better quality food, it will cost them more money and they’ll face more paperwork and government regulation.

Just what we all need - Not.

NAIS is a Violation of our Constitutional Rights! http://reliableanswers.com/politics/nais.asp Another quote from the article "Animal ID Makers in Hog Heaven" by Mary Zanoni:

1. The Standards and Plan Violate Many Provisions of the Constitution.

First Amendment Violations - Many Christians (as well as persons of other religious beliefs) cannot comply with the Department's proposed program because it violates their First Amendment right to free exercise. For example, the Old Order Amish believe they are prohibited from registering their farms or animals in the proposed program due to, inter alia, Scriptural prohibitions.

The way of life of these devout Christians requires them to use horses for transportation, support themselves by simple methods of dairy farming (most ship milk to cheese producers, since their faith prohibits the use of the technologies required for modern fluid milk production), and raise animals for the family's own food.

The proposed NAIS would place the Amish and other people of faith in an untenable position of violating one or another requirement of their most important beliefs. Further, it is not unlikely that enactment of the NAIS as presently proposed would force the Amish and other devout people to seek migration to another nation. It would greatly injure the status of our country among the community of nations if the Department's actions were to result in the forced migration of such simple, devout, and peaceful people.

Fourth Amendment Violations - The Department proposes surveillance of every property where even a single animal of any livestock species is kept; and to require, at a minimum, the radio-frequency identification tagging of every animal. (Standards, pp. 3-4, 6, 17-18.) Perhaps the Department had in mind as its model large commercial facilities where thousands, or in many cases tens of thousands, of animals are housed or processed. However, aside from large livestock businesses, there are also tens of millions of individual American citizens who own a pet horse, keep a half-dozen laying hens, or raise one steer, pig, or lamb for their own food.

In these instances, the "premises" that the Department plans to subject to GPS satellite surveillance (Standards, p. 10) and distance radio-frequency reading (Standards, p. 27) are the homes of these tens of millions of citizens. The government is not permitted to use sense-enhancing technologies to invade the privacy of citizens' homes. Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001). The sanctity of the home is entitled to privacy protection in circumstances where an industrial complex is not. See Dow Chemical v. United States, 476 U.S. 227, 238 (1986).

Therefore, the Department should abandon its present proposals, insofar as they entail enormously intrusive surveillance against unsuspecting innocent citizens who have done nothing more than to own an animal (a common form of personal property under the American system of law).

Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment Violations - The proposed NAIS is the first attempt by the federal government at forced registration in a huge, permanent federal database of individual citizens' real property (the homes and farms where animals are kept) and personal property (the animals themselves). (Standards, pp. 8-13; Plan, pp. 8, 12-13)

Indeed, the only general systems of permanent registration of personal property in the United States are systems administered by the individual states for two items that are highly dangerous if misused: motor vehicles and guns. It is difficult to imagine any acceptable basis for the Department to subject the owner of a chicken to more intrusive surveillance than the owner of a gun.

For example, whereas the owner of a long gun generally can take the gun and go hunting beyond the confines of his or her own property without notifying the government, the Department proposes that the chicken owner, under pain of unspecified "enforcement," must report within 24 hours any instance of a chicken leaving or returning to the registered property. (Standards, pp. 13, 18-19, 21; Plan, p. 17.)

Even more important than the trammeling of basic property rights under the program is the insult to fundamental human rights, which must remain free from government interference.

Surely it is overreaching for the Department to propose, as it has, the constant surveillance of one's home and animals when the citizen is only attempting to raise food for the household or for a limited local area, and there is no intention of distributing the food on a wider scale.

The foregoing numerous constitutional infirmities are bound to enmesh the Department and state governments in extremely costly litigation for years to come. Therefore, please reconsider the Department's plans to institute a program so at odds with fundamental American values.

Is there something we can do about it? YES, there is! You can protest. Together, We can stop NAIS by getting loud. Politicians need to hear our voice, the roar of the common people headed for the polls to vote them out of office this November for letting things like NAIS happen. Our politicians have been either asleep at the switch or actively conspiring with Big Agri-Biz to take away our freedoms.

The comment periods are still open. The USDA needs to know, in no uncertain terms, that people are not going to stand still for this sort of treatment. Big business should not be able to take over every aspect of our lives and profit from everything. Individual independence and freedom are more important to maintaining our national security than profits.

You can sign a petition against the NAIS through NoNAIS.org Contact your Congressmen, your Senators, your Representatives. Contact the USDA. Don't sit and do nothing and wait. Don't think you can make a difference? If so, you are wrong! Due to the overwhelming response from Missouri homesteaders, The Missouri Senate recently passed the following resolution: