Back to the drawing board for NAIS If ever there was a good idea gone bad, it is the National Animal Identification System.

In fact, if you were to write a textbook on how to turn people against something, it would be titled "NAIS: Fear and Loathing in the Countryside."

All along, small producers expressed their dismay at a system that would make them register their premises no matter whether they had a single goat or a herd of 1,000. That they were required to report any movement of their animals added to the sense of "big brother" watching them.

It is a statement of the obvious that folks who make their living on farms and ranches are independent-minded and have a healthy distrust of big government. The idea that the government was collecting a file full of information about every farm or ranch with one or more animals seemed even more menacing.

When the USDA tried to force 4-H and FFA members into registering their premises before they could show their animals at fairs, more red flags were hoisted.

A program presented as voluntary that would phase in over years suddenly looked as though it would be imposed whether anyone wanted it or not.

Indeed, after five years, only 36 percent of premises have been registered under NAIS. That an estimated 768,000 farmers and ranchers chose not to sign up under NAIS is testimony in itself about what they think about it.

The irony is that the concept behind NAIS is a good one. A further irony is that pork producers and dairy operators have had a variation of it for years, and many states have brand inspection programs that nearly duplicate what NAIS would accomplish. Larger operators of all types maintain scrupulous records on their animals.

When a disease appears in a population of animals, the state and federal governments must move quickly and decisively. Every minute lost chasing records could mean the spread of the disease will continue exponentially.

There's no doubt about it. NAIS is one way - but not the only way - to allow officials to identify and isolate afflicted populations.

There aren't many pork producers or dairy operators who couldn't tell you everything you'd every want to know about any of their animals. For them, it's part of their business. Even so, the first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Washington state demonstrated how long it can take to trace where the animal came from - Canada - and where its herd mates may have gone. Ultimately, some of those questions were not definitively answered after months of investigation.

That experience alone points to the need for a better system. Unfortunately, as it now stands, NAIS may not fit that bill.

At a hearing last week in Pasco, Wash., all but two of the 75 producers who testified opposed NAIS. These were not wild-eyed conspiracy theorists with tin foil on their heads. They included the state veterinarian, two statewide cattle organizations and other operators, large and small.

"Washington state has a good existing system, and the USDA needs to take the opportunity to slow down and see what the states are doing for a traceability system," said Jack Field, executive director of the Washington Cattlemen's Association.

Washington State Veterinarian Leonard Eldridge urged the USDA to "remain voluntary and flexible." The state currently has tracking systems for cattle brands - as do other states - and for brucellosis. Sheep are tagged under a scrapies prevention program.

With those programs in force, it's clear the added benefit NAIS offers to cattle and sheep producers would be minimal.

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack is wise to call a time-out and listen closely to producers before going ahead with full implementation of NAIS. They have a lot to say, and it's all worth hearing.

Ultimately, the answer will lie in an NAIS program that dovetails with the states' efforts - and respects the rights of all producers, large and small.

Original Article Here: http://capitalpress.com/main.asp?SectionID=75&SubSectionID=767&ArticleID=51600

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