Island of Distrust (why you should distrust the USDA)

by Karen Bergener
4-4-2007

Island of Distrust--Why Distrust?

So how did USDA become the agency no one trusts? The creation of the NAIS, without a statute or regulations, and without informing the public, has gone a long way toward ruining whatever trust had existed. Other incidents have increased the distrust.

Both the USDA and state departments of agriculture have slaughtered entire herds or flocks whose owners knew the action was unnecessary. News of these incidents has spread through the internet and anti-NAIS gatherings. This sharing of information emboldens others to tell about their experiences. A brief look at these stories reveals why neither federal nor state agriculture agents are respected by independent farmers and ranchers.

Mad Sheep is a book chronicling the Faillace family's creation of a sheep herd, imported from Europe in complete cooperation with Vermont state and federal agriculture agents. But then the USDA created a new disease, a variant of TSE (Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy or scrapie, a disease related to mad cow, which is not transferred between animals by contact). The USDA claimed this new disease was contagious and the Faillace's sheep had it. Repeated testing, including clinical observation, consistently showed the sheep to be disease-free, but ultimately the USDA used a procedure that had a high rate of false positives. Based on false positives, the Faillace's farm was quarantined. The family filed a lawsuit to challenge the quarantine, but were in compliance with the quarantine agreement when USDA arrived sometime between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m. and took away all their sheep to be killed. Once the flock was destroyed, the Faillaces legal case to stop USDA's quarantine no longer had a purpose. They were left with attempting to recover the value of their sheep from the government. While their book differs substantially from USDA's account, USDA has made no attempt to contradict their assertions.

The Henshaw's awoke at 5:00 a.m. on September 12, 2006, to find USDA officials and the local game warden entering their Virginia hunting preserve to destroy their pigs. For many days the Henshaws were held under what amounts to house arrest, while the killing went on. Pigs that weren't shot were trapped and starved. In the end, the family was left with the smaller pigs the agents could not kill, and were instructed to finish the job. People who visited the site reported finding dead animals and blood everywhere, along with human feces and trash left by the raiders.

In a New England state, a horse breeder was visited by a state agriculture agent and an agent from the USDA. The breeder asked the USDA agent to cover her feet prior to stepping out of her truck and onto his property. The state ag agent agreed with the breeder. The angered USDA agent left, and then quarantined the horse breeder's farm for many months. The breeder lost a season's worth of sales because no horses could leave his property.

In another eastern state, a poultry breeder who had long questioned state agriculture authorities, decided to have his flock tested for avian influenza (bird flu), in order to sell birds at local auctions. The test came back positive. The breeder requested repeat testing, and while that occurred, his flock was quarantined. So much, so good. However, getting back each set of test results should have taken days, but in fact took several weeks. The results of tests number two and three were negative, but the quarantine kept the breeder from selling birds the entire summer, leaving him with a huge flock to feed through the next winter.

Last year Longhorn cattleman Darol Dickinson of Ohio sold a cow. On a section of the official state health paper that said, "eartag no. or other official identification, name or description,"  the veterinarian issuing the health paper wrote the cow's registered name. A year later a USDA official arrived at Darol's farm and cited him for failure to put an identifying number on the form. He was required to fill out numerous forms admitting guilt and detailing each fact for further prosecution. Although Darol had never had a USDA violation in Ohio, the next time something happens he will be treated as a second time offender, which is someone USDA considers to have "wanton, habitual disregard of the law." His offense is that a veterinarian wrote the cow's name on the form instead of a number. The USDA agent told Darol the vet will have a hearing and may lose his license. Never was a question raised about the animal's health or protection of other farmers, only choosing the "wrong" option on a Health Certificate form.

Most of us know additional tales of abuse, as well as stories of USDA agents who are incompetent to advise about farming or livestock. A stable owner up East asked the local Extension office to help her decide if she should apply for pasture improvement funds. Two USDA agents came to her stable and inspected her property. They told her that they could fund assistance for one-quarter acre. Then, they said, she should take her 30 horses and rotate them through that quarter acre, in pairs, 30 minutes each. She told them her boarding stable offers turn-out six days a week, eight hours a day. They were unfazed. She asked if either of them had ever owned horses. Neither had.

Island of Distrust--Who Controls USDA?

Over the past 40 years, the power of the executive branch of government--both federal and state--has slowly but inexorably increased. Books have been written about how it has happened, but basically Congress has abdicated its role and allows agencies to do as they please. Somewhere in these agencies, however, we would hope to find rational minds that would control these abuses. But no. To see why, we need to look at who is involved.

It's all the same people. USDA, state agriculture departments, and agriculture industry groups and their employees are all members of the same industry organizations. Look at the organizations close to the USDA and the state agriculture departments:

The National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA), the chief non-government proponent of NAIS and its architect, is a nonprofit charitable organization with a mission "to be the forum for building consensus and advancing solutions for animal agriculture and to provide continuing education and communications linkages to animal agriculture professionals." Not a bad sounding goal. However, its major event every year is a Technology Conference at which the sole subject is National Animal Identification and the technology to implement it.

The United States Animal Health Association (USAHA), which describes itself as "a science-based, non-profit, voluntary organization. Its 1,400 members are state and federal animal health officials, national allied organizations, regional representatives, and individual members. USAHA works with state and federal governments, universities, veterinarians, livestock producers, national livestock and poultry organizations, research scientists, the Extension service and seven foreign countries to control livestock diseases in the United States. USAHA represents all 50 states, 7 foreign countries and 18 allied groups serving health, technical and consumer markets." Okay, not bad either. Except that USAHA, despite being a "science-based" organization, has produced no scientific basis for implementing NAIS, and neither has NIAA, USDA, or any state agriculture department.

The membership of NIAA and USAHA look like mirrors, because they are essentially all the same people: American Farm Bureau, Holstein Association, American Association of Bovine Practitioners, American Quarter Horse Association, American Horse Council, American Sheep Industry Association, American Veterinary Association... and that's just the first letter of the alphabet. USDA has three memberships in USAHA, with the Department of Homeland Security slacking at only one membership (USDA and DHS share responsibility for the Animal and Plan Health Inspection Service, which is running NAIS). Currently 39 state agriculture departments are listed as members of NIAA and 16 state funded universities. Every state's state veterinarian is a member of USAHA.

Yes, it's true. Your tax dollars support memberships in these organizations.

Now before you decide an evil empire is at work here, let's state the obvious: people in a profession join professional organizations so they can network. Corporations hope to get business contracts. Officials wish to get scientific information and share knowledge to decrease their workloads and costs. And no doubt you can find animal health information on the websites of both NIAA and USAHA. We'll put aside whether you agree with what they publish, such as information that feeds the on-going hysteria over bird flu. So there are plausible reasons for people to belong to these organizations and keep bumping into each

Island of Distrust--Island Mentality

So what's the problem? Well, imagine a herd of cattle dropped on an island and left to breed for a couple decades (yes, that's how long they've been designing the NAIS)--we all know the results of in-breeding. People who run the animal agriculture industry are on their own island. USAHA has gone so far as to characterize anti-NAIS forces as "opposition by animal owning entities outside mainstream animal agriculture." So they're on their island, and we aren't.

Now, keep in mind that state agriculture agencies receive large amounts of funding from the USDA for various "projects," just one of which is the NAIS. Research your own state budget; you might be surprised to find out how much. Now employees of the state ag departments go to USAHA meetings and "advise" USDA on policies it should implement to safeguard animal health.

This island of single-minded people produces self-serving results. In USAHA's October 2006 meeting, a committee recommended USDA adopt an interim rule that would stop interstate transport of cattle from states that do not have "a requirement that all breeding age cattle be officially identified by means of official tag or registration brand or tattoo at each change of ownership, other than movements direct to slaughter, or movements through one approved market and then direct to slaughter." Adopting such a rule would mean that animals never leaving their local area, much less the state, would have to be "officially identified" or else the entire state would face the economic consequences of restricted interstate trade.

Although no valid health reason or cost-benefit basis exists for such a program, it would certainly create incentives for states to implement at least a partial NAIS. And if it is done by an "interim rule," the agency can bypass the normal notice and comment period for rulemaking.

We don't know yet if USDA will follow USAHA's recommendation, but think about it: USAHA members advise USDA to implement a policy that will increase use of identification technology (with a resulting push for the technology to be easily read, and uniform across all states), and the same people are in NIAA, meeting with microchip manufacturers and database companies. The outcome is fairly easy to predict.

Doesn't USDA, a government agency established to serve the citizens, know that it's no longer trusted by independent farmers? It seems not. At public briefings set up by Extension to explain NAIS, farmers are saying, "We don't trust state ag or USDA, so we don't want them to have our information." And the agents are dumbfounded. The island's inhabitants don't know what the outside world thinks of them.

USDA has gone too far to regain the trust of many independent farmers. Wanton destruction of property--our animals--by USDA and state officials occurs too often. And with USDA on its own island, with no input from real outsiders, we have little hope for change. With this climate, the NAIS will never work--and farmers cannot support it. And they'll refuse to participate in other USDA programs, such as answering the Agriculture Survey. USDA has become increasingly irrelevant to the independent farmer--an agency for corporate agriculture.

Can USDA be changed? Do we want it to? Some say abolish USDA entirely. Others say overhaul it. That is up to you to decide. But the fact remains that most of us don't trust what USDA will do with the information in the NAIS database. If farmers don't trust USDA, they won't comply with NAIS and it will never work. And that is why the answer from farmers on NAIS is No NAIS, no way, no how.

Karin Bergener of Freedom, Ohio, is an attorney and a cofounder of the Liberty Ark Coalition dedicated to defeating NAIS. This article appeared in The Evener 2007 issue of Rural Heritage.

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