Having to ID your livestock, and working dogs!

[Sheepskin_border_collies]

Stop Animal ID

Federal & State Bills in Congress, the States, and USDA?s Actions

Congress is considering legislation (currently, HR 3170, and two

companion bills HR 1256 and HR 1254) that will virtually destroy

livestock farmers, and make recreational livestock activities a thing

of the past. Also, each year the Farm Bill funds NAIS in some

way. Livestock producers ? large, medium, and small, owners of

backyard flocks, hobbyists and individuals raising show birds,

horses, and other animals may soon be subjected to regulations

under this proposed National Animal Identification System (NAIS).

And, even though this legislation has not been passed, the US

Department of Agriculture is implementing NAIS on a so-called

voluntary basis. As if this wasn?t enough, many states are

establishing their own universal animal identification programs

designed after NAIS.

Animals Included:

? Cattle

? Sheep

? Pigs

? Poultry (chickens &

waterfowl)

? Goats

? Horses

? Llamas

? Alpacas

? Deer

? Elk

? Bison

and working dogs are now included.

 

What NAIS Requires

Under the proposed legislation, you will be required to identify EVERY bird, horse, goat, sheep, pig or cow you own

with either an expensive microchip like those injected under the skin of dogs (estimated cost $15-30 per chip), or (for birds) a 13- or 15-digit leg band. You will be required to register every animal with a central database that will include the animal?s identification number, plus a ?property identification number? (essentially, your address).

Banding/microchipping will commence at hatching for poultry.

 

 

NAIS is wrong because:

? It?s designed for marketing purposes ? in which case the market should govern

? The database is impossible to design, build, or maintain, with 100?s of millions of annual reports

? Tagging costs will be absurd - in poultry it will be 8 times the cost of an individual bird

? It won?t control disease, just build a bureaucracy

? It will cost more than real disease control methods

 

 

NAIS is Already Being Implemented

The government has already started assigning ID numbers to farms, members of NPIP, Scrapies program, etc. States are being encouraged to register farms, and are receiving funding from USDA to get registrations. Citizens are not told NAIS is voluntary. Feed stores around the country are requiring citizens to give their names and addresses when they buy livestock feed. Secretary Johanns has said that USDA won?t wait for Congress ? it no longer believes that Congress must act first, passing laws.

 

To get a petition go to: http://arkansasanimalproducers.8k.com/about.html

for more information go to: http://arkansasanimalproducers.8k.com/index.html

[Pipedream Farm]

What is your source for the inclusion of dogs in the NAIS?

 

HR 3170 Livestock Identification and Marketing Opportunities Act - Establishes the Livestock Identification Board which shall: (1) establish an electronic livestock identification system (livestock system) that is capable of tracing all U.S. livestock from the time of first movement from its original premise to the time of slaughter in less than 48 hours, and tracking all relevant livestock information (identification number, species, date of birth); (2) maintain a centralized livestock data system; and (3) determine the official livestock system identification technology.

Directs the Secretary of Agriculture to: (1) establish a U.S. premise identification system; and (2) verify that each animal, or group of animals subject to the livestock system, is properly identified upon first entry of the animal into commerce.

Authorizes the owner of an animal or group of animals that is not subject to the livestock livestock system to voluntarily subject such animal, or group of animals, to system tracking.

Exempts information obtained through the livestock or premise systems from Freedom of Information Act disclosure.

States that information obtained through the livestock or premise systems: (1) may not be released; (2) shall not be considered public domain information; and (3) shall be considered privileged and confidential commercial information.

Authorizes the Board to release livestock or premise system information for reasons of public health or disease or pest control. Requires the Board to release livestock or premise system information to: (1) a livestock owner upon request; (2) the Secretary, a state, or a tribal agency for animal disease surveillance; (3) the Attorney General for criminal investigation or prosecution; (4) the Secretary of Homeland Security for national security; (5) the Secretary of Health and Human Services for public health protection; and (6) a foreign government if necessary to trace livestock threatened by disease or pest, as determined by the Secretary.

Defines "livestock" as cattle, swine, sheep, goats, and poultry.

HR 1254 National Farm Animal Identification and Records Act - Amends the Animal Health Protection Act to direct the Secretary of Agriculture to establish an electronic nationwide livestock identification system to enhance the Department of Agriculture's response to outbreaks of livestock disease. Requires that such system: (1) be capable of tracing, within 48 hours, livestock from birth to slaughter; (2) provide for access by States and inclusion of State information; and (3) apply to all livestock born or imported into the United Sates, and to interstate and intrastate commerce.

Exempts, with specified exceptions, system information from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act or other release into the public domain.

Authorizes the Secretary to: (1) provide producer participation assistance; and (2) appoint an international panel of scientific experts to review the Department's response to an outbreak of livestock disease.

No mention of dogs in the text of this bill.

 

HR 1256 Amends the Animal Health Protection Act to exempt certain animal identification information from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

Sets forth discretionary and mandatory limited disclosure provisions

Mark

[Bill Fosher]

This is one of the typical scare tactics. NAIS is a proposed system that would allow federal and state animal health officials to know where animals are, and where they have been, in the case of an outbreak of a transmissible animal disease.

 

The hysteria surrounding the proposal, such as that reflected in the original post, have succeeded in making the issue so confusing as to have obscured the logical and safety-driven purposes of the proposal.

 

If there's an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, I want the location of every domesticated ungulate known PDQ. The faster the response, the fewer animals will have to be destroyed to control the spread of such a disease. Premesis ID and trackable animal movements off the primary premesis will make this possible.

 

It will not put responsible producers out of business. It will not require you to identify every animal individually (although in some cases that will probably be easy enough when and if it's required).

 

Incidentally, anyone who own sheep or goats is already required by law to have a premesis ID if the operation ever ships animals over 18 months of age to slaughter, or animals of any age to non-slaughter channels off the farm.

[concrete]

In Ohio to get the State tax exemtion on my livestock feed I have to give the feed store my name and address (which they know anyway).And as Bill mentioned I already use Government supplied Id tags with my farm ID on them on all my sheep. I think people are making much ado about nothing.

Kevin

[Pipedream Farm]

But Bill, right now we don't need to notify (pay) anyone when we take our livestock to another premises. For example, we will be taking sheep to a hay field owned by another farmer to work our dogs; under the new system we will be required to update the data base (within 48 hrs) for this. I wonder how much it will cost grazing projects in fees and labor (time to update the data base) every time their sheep are moved? What a managment problem if the flock is peridocially split between two locations instead of being moved as a lot. I suppose you could create two lots; but after being comingled they will need to be sorted by lots prior to being split again. Around here; farmers have multiple locations for their livestock and they are moved periodically.

 

As far as animal ID; we will be required to identify each animal since our animals are not processed as lots but as individuals.

 

The system as designed is geared towards large producers putting a greater burden on small producers.

 

More thoughts: Won't breeding ewes and rams need to be individually IDed since they are not typically sold as a lot? For example, when you cull a ewe, you're not culling all ewes. If that is ture, then each time you move part or all of your flock you will be required to update the movements on each individually IDed animal. Will there be a fee for each line of the database updated or for each time you call in to update?

 

Mark

[Bill Fosher]

Hi Mark,

 

My understanding is that you won't need to report any movement of stock as long as it is not comingled with stock from another premesis or sold. Moving animals to grazing areas would not be a reportable event, even if the flock was split, UNLESS the flock was to be comingled with animals from another premesis.

 

In other words, the issue is not who owns the land the aniamls are standing on, but who owns the animals that are standing on the land. You might be required to maintain a listing or grazing plan of where your animals were at what time, but I don't think there's any public health reason to know which animals were there when, especially if they have been mingled back in with the rest of your flock. If they were exposed to something while at the hay field, your whole flock is exposed to it as soon as they come home.

 

No one has said anything, as far as I know, about a fee being charged to update the database when reportable movement occurs. It would seem to me that if the idea is to encourage compliance, reporting should be free to the farmer.

 

Yes, when you ship a cull ewe, you'd have to put a tag in her ear. You have to do that now, under the scrapie eradication program. You also have to maintain a record of her sale for five years. NAIS would not have such strict record-keeping requirements, or more accurately, they would be shifted onto the government's plate.

 

And I hear the thing about the system being geared for larger producers and burdensome to small producers quite frequently. I don't get this. Even if we assume that the law would require every animal to be tagged, how is it any easier for a large producer to tag 10,000 lambs than it is for a small producer to tag 10? If anything, I think the burden would fall disproportionately on large commercial producers and taxpayers.

 

What I hear from homesteaders and backyard hobbyists is that their animals are somehow less susceptible to disease than those on commercial farms, and thus not a threat to their neighbors' stock. This of course is nonsense. Viruses don't care if they infect a battery hen or the pet chicken that a kid has trained to ride in the basket on her bike's handlebars.

 

The next thing they often say is that none of their animals are ever slaughtered for food, so they are not part of the human food chain. They are born on the farm, live their entire lives on the farm, die on the farm, and are buried on the farm. That's fine. They should never have to affix any individual ID to any such animal. But their premesis should still be registered so that when authorities are trying to establish a firebreak around an outbreak of FMD they know that there's a herd of goats in the back yard of John Doe's house, which is 500 yards as the crow flies from the back lot line of Farmer Smith's dairy.

 

Yes, Mr. Doe's goats might be killed. So might Farmer Smith's cows. But a complete firebreak will save animal lives and human livelihoods. Mr. Doe might think he has some pet goats, but in reality he has livestock, and as such he has a moral obligation to his neighbors who make their livings raising animals. By refusing the register their premesis, they're saying that their right to keep a few pets trumps the rights of all their neighbors to make a living in animal agriculture. They're putting the lives of their pets ahead of the livelihoods of the people who live and farm around them. It's as simple as that.

[Bill Fosher]

Part deux:

 

Having said all I've said above, I think it's clear that the anti NAIS crowd has succeeded in spreading enough lies and paranoid speculation about the program that there will be enough non-compliance to doom the program. I don't believeNAIS could succeed in locating animal premeses short of sending around jack-booted thugs to every doorstep to determine what if any livestock were there.

 

In the face of opposition from farmers and homesteaders, the state of Vermont -- the entire state -- recently abandoned plans to develop a premesis ID program that would have complied with NAIS. I happen to live in a border town, and later this fall I will have animals grazing a field that is within sight of Vermont grazing land across the Connecticut River. No one on the other side of that river, less than 100 yards wide in most places around here, will know whether there are or were animals over there at the same time my as my sheep.

 

This decision was made because of the opposition of people, some of whom still believe that NAIS would require them to implant chips in their animals that would allow Uncle Sam to track them from space. It was not made on the basis of legitimate concerns about the program -- of which there are many.

 

I expect that we will maintain the status quo, in which state and federal animal health officials will be trying to locate animals during a disease outbreak. They will fail because they simply don't know where to look, and millions of animals will ulitimately die to protect the privacy rights of a few farmers, hobbyists, and pet duck owners.

 

Hurray for the New Sons of Liberty, eh?

[Pipedream Farm]

Originally posted by Bill Fosher:

No one has said anything, as far as I know, about a fee being charged to update the database when reportable movement occurs. It would seem to me that if the idea is to encourage compliance, reporting should be free to the farmer.

Bill,

 

First off, it's never "free" to the farmer. Even if updating the database has no fee associated with it; it still costs the farmer collecting and providing the data to the database manager. While the data collection should already be occurring; there is no current requirement to notify an outside entity. Can you imagine trying to call in the movement of a lot of lambs right before a religious holiday along with everyone else. It'll be like trying to call tech support at Microsoft. (Your call is important to us, please stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order that it was recieved. Estimated wait time is......)

 

That makes sense to me too; BUT if the database is to be privatley run (or even run by the state) it will cost money to maintain it. If it's privately run, then either the money will come from reporting fees (under mandatory reporting with fines for non-compliance), the money will come from mining the database and selling some part of the information to others (i.e. mailing list to advertisers), or from state and/or federal grants. If it is government run, then the money will either come from reporting fees or budgetted in state or federal spending. Those are obvious sources to me, then there are more creative sources like a fee at the point of consumer purchase.

 

Mark

[Bill Fosher]

Questions surrounding the management and security of the database are legitimate problems that need attention. But as I said, I think the program is going nowhere, so there's little point in people like me who know very little about databases and even less about security to try to fix them.

 

All I know is that when a disease outbreaks occurs, more animals will die than necessary because a cadre of people didn't want Big Brother to know they had four goats out in back. And that they used some pretty underhanded, dishonest, and ruthless means to scare people into joining them in opposition to the program.

 

Claiming that the program would require ID and tracking of working dogs is just the sort of thing to get this kind of a forum worked up. They've found other hot-button issues to push in other places. The opposition to this on anti-big government grounds is akin to a militia movement, and appeals to that sentiment have been frequent. On 4H-type forums, they've described how the black helicopters will swoop in and a swat team will jump out and kill little Billy's prize calf because daddy didn't put in the government eartag.

 

They drop these anonymous bombshells and leave it for the naive readers to forward them to as many lists as possible. More people read them and forward them, and because it gets repeated enough, people start to think it's true. I don't know whether the original poster is one of the originators of this latest incarnation of lies, or just a person who passes along lies -- either intentionally or becuase she can't be bothered to find out whether what she's posting is true or false. It doesn't matter much.

 

Whatever you think of the strategy of the anti-NAIS crowd, the tactics have been dispicable, and they have carried the day. It's too bad that this forum got used for this purpose.

[Sue R]

Whatever you think of the strategy of the anti-NAIS crowd, the tactics have been dispicable, and they have carried the day. It's too bad that this forum got used for this purpose.

I don't think they've "carried the day" as Bill and Mark's ensuing comments and references have been civil, thoughtful, thought-provoking, and educational. Anyone who reads their comments will get a much different take on the NAIS.

 

The "alarmists" are the ones that seem to get the word out to many people who instantly believe the slanted and alarming "information" they read on the internet (if it's "in print" it's got to be true, right?). Therefore, a sensible discussion like Mark and Bill have contributed is very worthwhile reading for all of us who are or may someday be stock owners/producers and are generally already stock consumers.

 

We have cattle and the program we participate in requires two eartags - one a button and the other a tag - that individually identify each animal permanently. They weren't expensive (although similar identification on smaller stock might be significant in cost/application) and they were applied as easily as any other eartag.

 

I'm pleased to be part of a system that can help maintain animal/human health in our country while it provides us as producers with a good system for permanent identification of our livestock.

 

No matter what is proposed and how beneficial if may be in theory, there will be individuals and groups that will fight and argue against it no matter what the program involves. No system will ever be "perfect" but I hope a one will become the standard that will provide benefits that are well worth the effort.

 

Thanks, Mark and Bill, for your time and effort in providing such a polite, well-written, and well-discussed rebuttal that was very educational.

[Pipedream Farm]

Originally posted by Bill Fosher:

Whatever you think of the strategy of the anti-NAIS crowd, the tactics have been dispicable, and they have carried the day. It's too bad that this forum got used for this purpose.

I agree. That is why I posted initially even though I have reservations on the implematation of the program (but not the intended goal).

 

Mark

[Bill Fosher]

There's a fairly decent Q&A-format document on the American Sheep Industry site that debunks a lot of the lies propigated by the anti-NAIS crew. Go to http://www.sheepusa.org. There's a link on the home page called "NAIS Facts & Myths."