For Immediate release please

From: Darol Dickinson
Barnesville, Ohio 43713
740 758 5050 5-28-09

NAIS~~~ the Deterioration of Earned Respect

by Darol Dickinson

The entry of the USDA Colorado listening session was jammed with sign covered livestock trailers. Members of the Colorado Independent Cattle Growers Assn. were pawing the dirt about the possible mandatory NAIS. Well over 90% of the speakers were opposed to the feared program. Many had driven a full day to be able to speak 3 serious minutes to USDA staff.

Nearly 5 years ago I attended my first county NAIS listening session. I heard a detailed presentation by a professionally trained USDA state director. About 40 people crowded into a small room in a government building during the dark of an early winter evening. I knew the state NAIS director and had been in an Ohio Cattlemen's Assn. policy committee meeting with him. I had a high respect and appreciation for his fairness, knowledge and livestock experience.

The state Farm Bureau director was present and assured everyone NAIS was the right thing to do.

As the NAIS program was laboriously presented, the hair bristled on my neck like a Michael Vick dog challenged by a common alley cat. In respect for the presenter, I did not jump to my feet and scream fowl play. I listened until his whole load of hay was forked to the herd.

Over a dozen points were eloquently presented. You could hear a pin drop in a room full of hard working Ohio livestock people who weren't easily snookered.

We were told, NAIS would not be a choice. It was going to happen. NAIS would create increased livestock profit for those who promptly enrolled. Those who did not enroll would suffer losses--not the fault of USDA. We were duly warned! Without NAIS the export markets would promptly dry up for US livestock producers. If anthrax disease was introduced to the US livestock industry by terrorist, it would destroy all US agriculture. If foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) was introduced by terrorist it would engulf whole states overnight and wipe out the livestock industry. Then he said the Mad Cow media event in Washington state was the explosive reason NAIS was created by USDA -- to protect all concerned.

After the meeting the largest commercial cattle producer in the county signed up his premises. He had several ranches leased so he enrolled multiple premises. Another dozen people were quickly enrolled.

Most, either in western hats or bibbed overalls knew the successful USDA history. Attendees had the ultimate respect for USDA's eradication of bangs disease, screw worms, and numerous other livestock pearls including scabies and FMD. No country had ever attacked and successfully cleaned up livestock diseases like the USA. This country has the most disease free livestock in the world. There was a great respect for USDA's efforts and an earned position of world honor.

The following day I called the resident director at Texas A & M Research and Extension Center in Uvalde, Texas. (Many livestock diseases had hovered near the Mexican boarder.) I was told yes, that anthrax was a problem but for eighty cents per dose stock could be vaccinated and there would be no losses. It was done all the time in that area. I was also told that FMD was eliminated in 1929 and was not in the US or Mexico at this time. FMD would not kill normal healthy cattle and the meat was edible without harm to people. A vaccine is also available for FMD, if any people are concerned.

With some shocking research, the Mad Cow event was not the origin of NAIS. Meetings behind closed doors to plan NAIS had previously happened for over a dozen years. Unpublicized meetings prior to 1994 included Neil Hammerschmidt, now with APHIS, Ken Olson of American Farm Bureau, Beth Lautner with the National Pork Producers Council, John Weimers, with USDA, Chuck Sattler with the National Assn. of Animal Breeders, Glen Slack of the Livestock Conservation Institute, David Nolan of Cargill, and several tag companies were represented including Glenn Fisher of Allflex. Like hungry lions fighting over fresh kill, NAIS was carefully planned many years prior to the Mad Cow event and an equal number of years before the British FMD fiasco.

NAIS was planned without a valid cause, then, as disease was found; disease became the cause.

NAIS is a hard sell. Congress has approved nearly $150,000,000 to promote and enroll livestock breeders. Cooperative agreement grants have been given to state departments of agriculture, universities, tribes, livestock breed associations and a cast of thousands licensed or funded by USDA. Never in history has an unpopular government program been funded so strong with only minuscule acceptance. As of today less than 10% of all livestock producers have surrendered to NAIS premises enrollment.

One year ago, Mike Johanns gave up. After spending nearly 3 years promoting NAIS, the Bush Sec. of Agriculture wrote his boss a letter of resignation, and dropped it in the mail box on his way to the parking lot. No two week or one month courtesy notice was given. He evaporated out of Washington DC with the same dignity a common thug would offer the owner of a low stakes cock fight ring.

From USDA's world respect in disease eradication, it is now totally changing to a sad ending of political bribery, distrust, and a cowering staff of "bought" white shirted degrees.

USDA planned to grasp every livestock producer by 2008. It started with listening sessions in every state. Now the big guns have rolled out meetings all over the nation. The rural peasants are allowed to assert their three minute views for refusing to enroll in NAIS. Regional town hall type meetings are staffed with seasoned "listeners" such as Hammerschmidt, Dicks, and Weimers. A "low-tech" video of Sec of Agruculture Tom Vilsack is used to warm up a hardened crowd.

As USDA's respect dwindles, cowboys, consumers, and all types of food producers are participating in the national "mud-throwing" sessions. The recent Colorado session gave USDA "listeners" an atmosphere less friendly than a Birney Madoff investor's meeting.

As USDA team members and security guards entered the Colorado meeting hall cattle trailers, angry ranchers and signs of protest decorated the area. Quite conspicuous were the hangman's nooses with signs--"FREE ROPES FOR USDA NAIS OFFICIALS! NO NAIS! HEY USDA--"DON'T TREAD ON ME!

USDA official listeners were greeted by numerous livestock trailers covered by home made signs clearly displaying opposition to NAIS. Hangman's nooses made the basic statement from cattle owners to the feds. "FREE ROPES FOR USDA NAIS OFFICIALS." USDA security guards were required to strip the nooses off as it was thought they indicated "VIOLENCE AND CROWD DISORDER." It was too late. The true dead serious message was already expressed.

Police, ordered by USDA, demanded all hangman's nooses be removed from the property --"it was threatening violence." One law enforcer said he thought the nooses were rather humorous, considering the cause.

As federales and farmers mumbled into the trouncing room, each person was given a real set of amputated rattlers from a Colorado rattle snake. People of the land were as serious as a snake bite about ending all plans of mandatory NAIS. As occasional rattling sounds were numerous, it made an eerie sound like no other listening session in history. The nooses were serious, as were the venomous steel eyed ranchers defending their livelihoods.

The Colorado spirit became more hostile. Over 90% spoke against NAIS, the same as previous sessions. Those speaking for NAIS were connected in every case by generous grants from USDA for the sole purpose of coercing enrollments.

Chuck Sylvester, past CEO of the huge National Western Stock Show, was inflamed because Colorado State University, and the Colorado Department of Agriculture (recipients of $4,746,993 of NAIS grant money) had forced youth exhibitors at the Colorado State Fair to enroll their parent's ranches in NAIS. He compared USDA to child molesters and pedophiles. He closed with a stern, "MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON YOUR SOULS!"

With dozens of red faced presenters the tone changed from the problem of NAIS to the cause of NAIS--USDA itself. Kansas rancher Mike Callicrate said, "I think we need to have a cleansing at USDA and it has to go deep, and the disease we need cleansing from USDA is corporate control--people who have gotten into USDA. We need to assess whether USDA has done their job? If USDA was to protect the food system --you are FIRED! If USDA is supposed to make sure family farmers have access to local markets, and the people who they know--you are also FIRED!"

The sessions originally designed to help USDA fine tune NAIS, completely backfired. The flaws are going beyond NAIS to the inner bowels of USDA. Quotes like, "We need to go to Washington with our pitch forks!" "If NAIS becomes mandatory there will be blood in the streets!"

And last, "We will fight NAIS to the death!"

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