Pasco Washington Listening Report
Published: Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Peeved ranchers lambaste federal effort to ID herd animals
By Shannon Dininny
Associated Press
PASCO -- Five years after the federal government started a program to trace livestock in the event of a disease outbreak, just 36 percent of ranchers are taking part.
U.S. Department of Agriculture officials found out why Monday, when 75 Western livestock producers gave them an earful during a meeting. The "listening session" was one of seven scheduled around the country in May and June to hear ranchers' concerns, with the goal of increasing participation in the program.
Those concerns haven't changed much in five years: The cost is too high for small farmers. The regulations amount to bureaucratic suffocation. The program neither prevents nor controls disease. And what's in a farmer's pasture is nobody's business.
"This is the last of your freedom, boys. Freedom restricted is freedom lost," said Bert Smith, a cattleman from Layton, Utah, who owns Ox Ranch in Ruby Valley, Nev.
The nationwide tracking system, started in 2004, is intended to pinpoint an animal's location within 48 hours after a disease is discovered. Farmers were to have voluntarily registered their properties with their states by January 2008. Mandatory reporting of livestock movements was to begin one year later.
Just 36 percent (USDA's numbers) of the nation's estimated 1.4 million farm "premises," which includes farms' multiple locations, are registered.
As of March 31, the USDA has obligated $119.4 million toward the program, which it says will help ensure the safety of the food supply, particularly for export markets that may refuse to accept U.S. beef, pork or poultry during a disease outbreak.
During the recent swine flu epidemic, several countries banned U.S. pork products, even though there is no evidence the virus is spread by food.
The proposed system does nothing to prevent disease, and animal tracking would be better left for states to handle themselves, said Wade King, president of the Cattle Producers of Washington.
"USDA should be focused on preventing the disease instead of tracing it," he said.
Carol Osterman of Akyla Farms in LaConner said her small farm of cattle, goats, pigs, llamas, poultry and horses would be forced to close if the suggested "regulatory burden" becomes a reality.
She recommended the program be eliminated, or at best, applied only to large, confined-animal feeding operations.
So far, the level of participation varies by livestock species, though no data was immediately available. USDA spokeswoman Joelle Schelhaus said the opportunity for improving participation in the cattle industry is highest due to its sheer size.
Separate surveillance programs for brucellosis and tuberculosis track fewer than 20 percent of cattle, while 90 percent of sheep are tracked under a similar surveillance program for scrapie.
Only two people spoke out strongly in favor of the program, one of them a representative for a company that supplies animal identification tags.
Read entire story at HeraldNet and make comments
I did attend the Pasco listening session, but I was late as the session began at nine. I got there right before the comments ended, and I did make a brief comment. I told them "1,000 farm and ranch families go out of business each month due to economic pressures and excessive government regulation. My sons will not be able to continue in the ranching business with NAIS. I ask you USDA people---What part of 'NO ANIMAL ID' do you not understand?!"
Pasco Washington is basically a farming community(fruit trees, grapes, potatoes, asparagus, corn and other vegetables) with a few ranches in surrounding areas. It is important to note that there are kill plants there to process the cattle streaming across the border from Canada, so it was convenient for the packers to show up! But I was told only 3 spoke for NAIS.
I estimate there were 50 to 75 other attendees, some ranchers driving 8 hours to get there, I drove 4 hours. I personally commented to a USDA person that Pasco was NOT a good place to hold a listening session if they wanted ranchers to attend, and in the breakout session, I further scolded them for this. I explained to them that most of the attendees were NOT being paid to be there---we paid our own travel expenses, and because the session began in the morning, those of us who came a great distance had a motel bill on top of that,
AND we had to take 2 days away from our operations during the busy spring season.
I used the comments from the Pennsylvania session and told them the USDA has shown themselves to be untrustworthy--promising a voluntary program and no one wants to volunteer. I also told them that they are not trustworthy as they insist on writing the COOL regulations so they are ineffective in preventing disease from entering our country.
I also explained to them that the ranchers I know DO NOT have computers, and for some of them a library is 150 miles away (to use a computer) and they DO NOT have time to learn and use a computer. The whole NAIS plan is ludicrous and WILL NOT WORK. I think I scolded them pretty well and a young rancher had some prepared comments that were very good. We both told them "We will not comply". Others there were more into explaining the details that wouldn't work for their situation, and that the cost was exorbitant.
There were two cops there with scowls, and all of the USDA employees seemed rather meek and embarrassed, which makes me think that the Pennsylvania session had made them realize just what they are personally doing. However, I also know that their training may have taught them that they need to have an 'understanding attitude'. Who knows?
I know what a toll it takes on families to be forever fighting govt. agencies determined to put us out of business.
For Liberty!
Elaine Smith
NAIS ~~ over estimated, over promised, over budget, unnecessary, unneeded and unwanted.
Brad Headtel
The NAIS is a years-old concept that has outlived its time and fails to recognize that economic instability is our greatest national hazard, not, if all the animals have a government number.
Mary--Fireworks Farm, CA.
NAIS is not a direct ban on meat or chicken or goat meat or ...
but a slow, complex legal threat entailing loss of more and more
control and then of isolated bankruptcy or of just giving up farming
or ranching completely.
Linn Cohen-Cole, 2008
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State
(Source: New York Times, Oct. 28, 1973)
Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.
Brad Headtel-------On Bruce (USDA) Knight's pandemic
projections
of national livestock catastrophic die-offs.
Bureaucracy never sleeps.
Neil Young
Makes ranchers paw the dirt----like a bull looking forward to the virtues of castration.
on NAIS-------Brad Headtel
Only Jesus loves the stupid. As He looks closer toward the DC Beltway------it's an ever increasing stretch.
Brad Headtel
You are known by the low morals of the bureaucrats you tolerate.
Brad Headtel
Phony science begets phony public policy.
Walter Williams
NAIS~~~~ Mother of all unnecessary federal job creation schemes.
Brad Headtel
The issue is not the issue. Who decides the issue is the issue. If you decide the issue you are a free man. If a politician decides the issue you can un-elect him, but if a bureaucrat decides the issues you are his pawn and practically without recourse.Harold Hockstatter
It is sad that here in the United States of America we must fight our government to protect our own rights, but fight I will.Jerry Fennell--From "Shattered Dreams"
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.On NAIS -- H.L. Mencken
Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it..Adolf Hitler
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.Robert Heinlein
If a government program is not worth doing at all, it is not worth doing well....on NAIS - Brad Headtel
Communism ~~ the government owns the means and method of production. In fascism the government controls the means and method of production.We're not happy until you're not happy...USDA official on the Westland/Hallmark Meat recall of Feb. 17, 08
NAIS is one of those issues that everyone wishes never became an issue. It is a genie that will not go back in the bottle.Troy Marshall, Seed Stock Digest, 1/7/08
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.on the NAIS program..... - Frederick Douglass
We're out here branding cattle, worrying about our best horse going blind, when all of a sudden the USDA is working at mach speed filling our saddle bags with heavy NAIS rocks.Michelle Reid
....NAIS matters less than flea sweat.....producer interest in NAIS is less robust than a paper pig in a barbeque pit.Wes Ishmael, Contributing editor,
BEEF Magazine, Dec. 2007
I work day and night to prevent NAIS!This is the first time in my life I have had the opportunity to save billions of dollars of wasted government tax for my fellow livestock producers all over the nation. As it was said about Queen Esther of old, from the great palace of Shushan, '...who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this.?' I feel the NAIS program, as planned, will embezzle from 10 to 60% of the profit from every livestock producer, and that is not an acceptable price to pay for a naive USDA concern about future unknown or previously eradicated diseases. Every consumer or livestock owner should spend full time to prevent the enforcement of this cost to our nation.
Darol Dickinson
NAIS will not be mandatory under my tenure. I repeat will not! Mike Johanns on mandatory National Animal Identification Surrender.
Sec. of Agriculture Mike Johanns quit the job two months later.
NAIS will put Livestock owners under closer surveillance than terrorists, illegals aliens, drug
dealers, and convicted sex offenders/child molesters. Currently,
only convicted sex offenders/child molesters have to register their premises.BSE, bovine spongiform encephalopathy takes five to seven years to develop. It's not actually a disease that you have to rush to trace. You can take about all the time you need. What you want to do is prevent it in the first place.
Reno, Nev. --- 11/29/07 Jay Truitt
NCBA VP for governmental affairs,
on the USDA proposed
48 hour
emergency
disease
trace back.
Most of the stuff people worry about ain't never gunna happen.
Will Rogers . . . . on NAIS
No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
Mark Twain
What this country needs are more unemployed bureaucrats.
Edward Langley
Each time we give up information about ourselves to the government, we give up some of our freedom. The more the government or any institution knows about us, the more power it has over us. When the government knows all of our private information, we stand naked before official power; stripped of our privacy, we lose our rights and privileges. The Bill of Rights then becomes just so many words.
Senator Sam Ervin, June 1974.
The USDA is a run away agency out of control, with total disregard for U.S. citizens, yet full regard for other countries and free trade at all costs. Dr. Max Thornsberry, President R-CALF USA
NAIS . . . a program that somewhat resembles an expensive plan to use baseball bats to kill mosquitoes . . . when we haven't found the mosquito---and the plan was proposed by a bat manufacturer. NAIS . . . when freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free. The urge to save humanity is almost always a fake front for the urge to rule.
H.L. Menchen
Is the USDA run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it? NAIS is like a fat man in a swim suit - you may not appreciate what you see, but what isn't revealed is even more fearful. NAIS Employee -- Never argue with a person whose job depends on not being convinced. Remember - A major animal disease outbreak to a State Veterinarian is like a multi-car wreck to an auto body shop.NAIS is the very model of how an unresponsive Executive Branch agency can cooperate with a globalist industrial agriculture and a technocratic corporate elite to force an undesired program upon an unwilling populace.
Mary Zanoni
NAIS press releases from USDA could present caviar in such a light we want to run from it like a falling meteorite.Many associations embrace the NAIS because their paid leadership does so, regardless of what their members truly want.
Marida Favia delCore Borromeo
On NAIS - If USDA comes up with a stupid idea -- If Congress votes to fund it -- If 296,000,000 taxpayers write the check -- I'm sorry, it's still a stupid idea.NAIS is a disease masquerading as its own cure.NAIS is the result of looking for trouble, not finding it anywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying costly incorrect remedies.As the government is doing wrong to us, like with NAIS, you gotta know they are doing wrong to people all over the world, right? Why do all these countries hate the USA?
Linn Cohen-Cole
Once government gets its hands on new power, it is never relinquished.
Henry Lamb ~~~ Sovereignty International
| Other Websites you might want to check out: | ||
| Dickinson Cattle Co., Inc | Information about Dickinson Cattle Company | www.dickinsoncattle.com |
| BueLingo Cattle | Information about BueLingo Cattle | www.buelingo.net |
| Longhorns Head To Tail Store | Longhorn Decor | www.head2tail.com |
| Longhorn Hideaway | Subdivision on Working Texas Longhorn Ranch in Ohio | www.longhornhideaway.com |
| Longhorn Tours | Tours of a Working Texas Longhorn Ranch in Ohio | www.longhorntours.com |
| NAIS Sucks | The truth about the horribly invasive government program | www.naissucks.com |
| TexasLonghorn.net | Information and prices of Texas Longhorn Cattle | www.texaslonghorn.com |
| Texas Longhorn Heritage | The Texas Longhorn Heritage Foundation | www.texaslonghornheritage.com |
| Texas Longhorn Tours | Tours of a Longhorn Ranch | www.texaslonghorntours.com |
| ITLA | The International Texas Longhorn Association | www.itla.com |
| ITLA Store | Longhorn Products and cattle for sale | www.itlastore.com |
| Bible Baptist Church | Bible Baptist Church in Cambridge Ohio | www.biblebaptistchurchcambridge.com |
| Willard Fast Lube | Get your car fixed or oil changed at Willard Fast Lube | www.willardfastlube.com |