For farm family, no more fairs

Cassidy Younggreen, 13, won awards for her goats at the Boulder County Fair last year, but this year she and her brother Ryan won't be there. They raise 30 goats, two llamas and 15 chickens.

BROOMFIELD -- Cassidy and Ryan Young-green won a passel of ribbons in the Boulder County Fair last year, carrying on a family tradition of putting their livestock up against any comers in annual county-fair competitions.

But this year, Cassidy, 13, and Ryan, 11, aren't showing anything at the Boulder County Fair -- not even their award-winning goats -- because they would be forced to participate in an intrusive new government program, said their mom, Kellyjo Younggreen.

"They tell us you have to register, you have to register," Younggreen said. "But I think this just goes too far."

Some other farm families in Colorado feel the same way about a national animal-identification program that they say is a violation of private-property rights.

They are refusing to let their children enter their livestock in fair competitions -- including those in Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Larimer and Weld counties and the Colorado State Fair -- where entries must comply with the National Animal Identification System. NAIS is a U.S. Department of Agriculture initiative designed to help regulators track animal diseases.

"There are several instances of families across the state who are simply saying no," said John Reid, a cattle operator in Ordway and member of the Colorado Independent CattleGrowers Association. "There is overwhelming opposition to this initiative everywhere."

But proponents say the ID program will help prevent a national outbreak of livestock disease. Fair organizers also point out protesting families are few and far between.

In fact, they say, the number of fair participants is actually up this year.

"It seems pretty isolated to maybe two families and a (4-H) club or two," said Richard Biella, president of the Boulder County Fair board.

Biella, too, was skeptical of the ID plan. But as an owner of Angus cattle, he became a fan because he says it could prevent health problems afflicting entire operations.

Cassidy Younggreen, 13, won awards for her goats at the Boulder County Fair last year, but this year she and her brother Ryan won't be there. They raise 30 goats, two llamas and 15 chickens.

"I understand some people don't feel comfortable with the program," Biella said. "But truly, if the government wanted to find out about us, they only have to look at our license plates, punch in a couple of numbers, and they'd get all they wanted."

At the center of the NAIS are premises identification numbers, or PINs. When livestock owners register for a PIN, they must give basic contact information as well as what species of animals are on their property and the type of operation.

So far, the system is voluntary. But a handful of county fairs in Colorado this year are requiring PIN registration for 4-H livestock that might go to market.

The state fair also requires PIN registration, but that hasn't stopped 4-H families from entering competitions, said Gwen Bosley, animal ID coordinator at the Colorado Department of Agriculture.

"There are a lot of misconceptions out there about what this is all about," Bosley said. "But once you explain that it is simply a way to protect animals from an animal health emergency, people understand. There might be a handful of families in the state who have dropped out of fairs because of this, but that's about it."

Kellyjo Younggreen, however, said a national ID program will only favor corporate farms because only one animal will be registered out of a whole section of the same breed of animals. Small operators like her -- with a 5-acre operation of mostly chickens, rabbits and goats -- will have to tag each animal.

The possible expense of such a program -- and the notion her family's operation will be part of a massive government database -- makes her nervous.

"I just don't like the scare tactics the government is using," Younggreen said. "It feels like we are being forced into something we don't need."

Monte Whaley: 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com

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