June, 2009

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N.A.I.S., FRIEND AND FOE

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Lynn Stuter

Lynn Stuter

By Lynn Stuter
June 30, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

On June 6, 2006, NewsWithViews.com published an article I wrote concerning the National Animal Identification System or NAIS. In that article, some of the history of NAIS was touched on as well as the international component and the fact that NAIS was the brainchild of both government and private agricultural industry.

In a document entitled Summary and Future Action, from the LCI National Livestock Identification Symposium, 1994, we find some of the players instrumental in bringing NAIS about:

• Nancy Robinson, NLIS (See note)
• Glenn Slack, LCI (Livestock Conservation Institute)
• Ken Olson, American Farm Bureau Federation
• Beth Lautner, National Pork Producers Council
• Neil Hammerschmidt, Holstein Association
• Fred Bauer or Bower (they couldn’t decide how to spell his name), International Llama Registry
• Chuck Sattler, National Association of Animal Breeders
• Neil Anderson, American Sheep Industry
• Arne Nielson, MAGTAG I/S
• Glenn Fisher, Allflex
• John Weimers, USDA
• Vern Taylor, Trace-em

Note: While Nancy Robinson is listed as being from NLIS, her actual résumé, courtesy of Livestock Marketing Association, reads as follows: “Vice President Government & Industry Affairs, Livestock Marketing Association … grew up in Kansas and received her bachelors and masters degrees from Fort Hays University in Hays, Kansas. She worked for a number of years in Washington DC as a congressional staff aide and political appointee at USDA in food safety and animal health agencies. In 1989, Nancy joined LMA as the Vice President for Government & Industry Affairs, representing the LMA membership and the marketing industry on all federal legislative and regulatory matters. She also provides support to the region executive officers on state legislative and regulatory matters.”

Following the 1994 LCI National Livestock Identification Symposium, LCI became the National Institute of Animal Agriculture (NIAA).

According to a document, on file at the Iowa State University Library, the Livestock Conservation Institute came about in 1951 as the result of the consolidation of other previously established organizations. The LCI website carried the URL of www.lcionline.org. While LCI no longer exists, if you click on the URL, it will redirect to the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) website.

The registrant of lcionline.org is, according to Network Solutions, Livestock Conservation Institute (LCI), 1910 Lyda Drive, Bowling Green, Kentucky. This is the former address of the National Institute of Animal Agriculture (NIAA) before they moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado.

And, according to Network Solutions, the Administrative and Technical contact for LCI is someone named Dave Francis at 600 Maryland Ave SW, Ste 1000W, Washington, DC. This, of course, is the address of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

It becomes very apparent that the lines between LCI, AFBF and NIAA are blurred; as such, where one ends and the other begins is questionable. Karin Bergener commented on this in her article “Sold Out by Farm Bureau” in February 2007,

“For a fun-filled afternoon, try tracing all the interwoven boards among the organizations involved in developing the NAIS, and how their staff move from one organization to another – a consultant one year, an employee of another company the next, and then a government worker. You already have a start with Farm Bureau’s Jim Fraley and David Miller as members of the NIAA board of directors, to which you can add Jon Johnson of Texas Farm Bureau. Another prime example is Kevin Kirk, who began his career with Farm Bureau, and is now NIAA treasurer, and also the person responsible for implementing premises registration and mandatory radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on cattle, in his job with the Michigan Department of Agriculture, the beginning of NAIS in Michigan.”

On the main page of the NIAA website, running across the top, is a banner which reads “Vilsack open to mandatory livestock traceback …”. How long the banner has been there isn’t known but the corresponding story was posted by Reuters on March 27, 2009; two months ago.

The article makes no bones about the government’s intent to make NAIS mandatory, going so far as to quote Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (former governor of Iowa) as saying …

“I’m hopeful that we can bring people in and lay out on the table what are your concerns about a mandatory system … Let’s work through them and see if we can get to a point where we can then fashion a mandatory system that would do the job and would work.”

On the membership page of the NIAA website is a litany of nation-wide organizations that obviously support NAIS as members of NIAA, among them some of the more recognizable groups familiar to farmers and ranchers across the nation:

• American Farm Bureau Federation
• American Quarter Horse Association
• Dairy Farmers of America
• Livestock Marketing Association
• National Cattlemen’s Beef Association
• National Livestock Producers Association

Listed on the membership page of the NIAA website under state member organizations are the Farm Bureau groups from Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio, Texas and Virginia.

State Agricultural Departments (or the equivalent) having membership in NIAA include Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington (state), West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

And while all the organizations listed support NAIS, what about the small farmers and ranchers, who will be effectively put of business if NAIS is implemented. Do they want NAIS, and do the nation-wide organizations to which they might belong represent them on the issue of NAIS?

In January 2009, the USDA posted proposed new rules in the Federal Register that would, in effect, make NAIS mandatory. The actual rules can be read by going to this website, and clicking on the .html or .pdf symbols on the right side of the first line where “proposed rules” is listed under “type” of document.

The USDA provided a comment period, ending March 16, 2009, for people who wanted to comment on the new rules.

Approximately 9,000 people commented, and the comments were pretty much along the lines of “no how … no way … no to NAIS.”

On May 1, 2009, the USDA then published in the federal register a notice …

“to inform the public of seven upcoming meetings to discuss stakeholder concerns related to the implementation of the National Animal Identification System.”

Read that very carefully for what it does say and for what it does not say. What it does not say is that the hearings are to discuss whether “stakeholders” want NAIS, but only what their “concerns related to the implementation of” NAIS are. This makes it very obvious that USDA is going to push NAIS through, making it mandatory, whether the “stakeholders” want it or not. While USDA may think farmers and ranchers a tad backward, uncultured and uneducated, that fact has not been lost on them, which USDA discovered to their angst the hard way.

The notice goes on to specify the areas in which USDA seeks the concerns of “stakeholders” in the implementation of NAIS: cost, impact on small farmers, privacy and confidentiality, liability, premises registration, animal identification and animal tracing.

At the hearings, many of which have now been held, the USDA got an earful from farmers and ranchers regarding NAIS, and the message, loud and clear, like the majority of the 9,000 comments to the regulations.gov site, was “no how … no way … no to NAIS”; one gentlemen going so far as to ask the USDA officials “what part of ‘no’ do you not understand?” He went on to call the listening sessions a “dog and pony show,” telling USDA officials present that they knew full well that they already had their minds made up about NAIS, that they fully intended to implement it whether the people liked it or wanted it.

Bob Parker, a rancher in Missouri, spoke at one of the USDA hearings. Parker found himself voted off the county Farm Bureau board when he confronted them about the information they were not putting out about NAIS as opposed to a letter sent to the USDA in support of mandatory implementation.

Parker also commented on how Farm Bureau calls itself a grassroots organization, yet none of the county Farm Bureau organizations in Missouri had seen the letter of support sent to the USDA by the Missouri State Farm Bureau. He challenged the Missouri Farm Bureau president to a debate any time; he wasn’t taken up on his challenge.

Parker commented that while NAIS has been in the works for 15 years, this was the first time the little guy had been given a chance to speak; after all the big guys got together and decided who, what, when, where and how much, they now condescended to give the little guy a chance to speak; not a voice but a chance to speak.

Some states—Utah, Arizona, Kentucky, Missouri, and Nebraska—have passed legislation banning mandatory premise and animal identification; other states—Illinois, Montana, and Texas—are considering similar proposals. However, the proposed rules, published in the Federal Register and accessible here, on page 1638,

“This proposed rule has been reviewed under Executive Order 12988, Civil Justice Reform. If this proposed rule is adopted: (1) All State and local laws and regulations that are in conflict with this rule will be preempted; (2) no retroactive effect will be given to this rule; and (3) administrative proceedings will not be required before parties may file suit in court challenging this rule.”

When legislation to outlaw NAIS in Arkansas was introduced, Farm Bureau worked behind the scenes to defeat it. In Washington state, in January 2007, legislation was introduced to bar implementation of NAIS in the state. Three months after it was introduced, one of its sponsors introduced a striker that effectively gutted the bill. Did the striker have anything to do with the sponsor’s affiliation with Farm Bureau?

A USDA listening session was held in Pasco, Washington on May 18, 2009. Did Farm Bureau notify their members? No, they didn’t. Why not? In the words of one Farm Bureau official,

“We do have a cattle committee and if they thought it was important they would have been there… If they didn’t go it was probably because they know that AFBF will follow policy and have our backs covered.”

If the Washington Farm Bureau supports voluntary NAIS as they claim, and the hearings concerned rules to effectively make NAIS mandatory for all livestock producers, not just cattle, one would think they would be notifying their members, encouraging them to attend and voice their support for, at the least, a voluntary NAIS. Not only this, but Washington Farm Bureau claims to be one of the primary protectors of property rights. What is more intrusive to the property rights of livestock producers than premises identification through GPS coordinates and the assigning of a premise identifier such that all animals on that property can be identified to that property and their movements off that property reported to the government within 24 hours? As one individual who testified stated, “My property and what animals are on my property is none of the government’s business!” A sentiment shared by an overwhelming majority of small livestock producing operations.

And to be fair, the Washington Farm Bureau should not be singled out for their failure to notify their members; members of Farm Bureau in other states were likewise not notified of the hearings.

As far as the Washington Farm Bureau official’s reference to AFBF, this is the same AFBF that helped bring NAIS about, whose lines with concern to the Livestock Conservation Institute (LCI) that became the National Institute of Animal Agriculture (NIAA) are blurred; this is the same AFBF that is now a member of NIAA that is running the banner across their main page about Ag Secretary Vilsack being open to mandatory livestock traceback.

But in light of AFBF’s involvement in NIAA, what exactly is their policy on NAIS? A trek through the AFBF website produced no section that delineates their policies. If the AFBF policy, with concern to NAIS, is on their website, it is not readily apparent to anyone seeking it.

A search of the AFBF website for “NAIS” turned up exactly four relevant articles, none of which disclosed what AFBF’s policy is concerning NAIS, yet the AFBF website claims to be “The Voice of Agriculture.”

In one article, (January 2007) USDA undersecretary, Bruce Knight tells producers “It’s a voluntary program, and it’s not going to go mandatory” citing the backlash from producers if that happened. Unfortunately, the government has a track record of telling tall tales; too many times they have claimed one thing, then done just the opposite. No better evidence of this is to be found than the words of USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack two years and two months later in the Reuter’s Article of March 27, 2009. Then there is the home page of the USDA/APHIS/NAIS website sports the government’s laudatory approval that “Wisconsin [is] leading the way in animal identification.” Wisconsin is one of two states that has made NAIS mandatory. Read this article about the enforcement prosecutions that are already occurring in Wisconsin regarding NAIS. The amount of money to be made in enforcement will put small producers out of business, forcing the sale of their homes and property to satisfy fines and legal fees.

On June 20, 2009, in response to the pulling of money for NAIS from the USDA budget by the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, the Illinois Farm Bureau had this to say,

“Farm Bureau supports restoration of funding for the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) withheld by the subcommittee, calling NAIS ‘a critical program designed to protect animal health through streamlined surveillance and response.’”

Further that …

“Once the series of hearings is concluded at the end of the month, we expect USDA to decide to implement the program in some way, so it makes sense to have money appropriated for that purpose.”

What part of “no” does Farm Bureau not understand?

In his presentation at the USDA listening session, David Pfrang, recent past president of the Kansas Cattlemen’s Association, had this to say about the Kansas Farm Bureau,

“In 2004 the Kansas Legislature tried to pass mandatory Kansas premise I.D. through the backing of Kansas Livestock Assoc., Farm Bureau and Sea Board. It failed Big Time because we, the producers, fought just as we are fighting back today.”

When Rhonda Perry of Howard County, Missouri testified at the USDA listening session, representing herself as a small livestock producer and 5600 families of the Missouri Rural Crises Center, the points she made are salient:

1. NAIS is a solution in search of a problem;

2. the problems NAIS is intended to address come from the processing plants, imported meat, and large industrial livestock operations that are wreaking havoc in rural areas, none of which is the fault of the small producer;

3. it is these very operations that the government is supplementing, in one way or another, with taxpayer money while ignoring the problems inherent with the operations; yet it is the small producer who the USDA is trying to saddle with this costly program;

4. while NAIS cannot track the bad product from the processing plant to the consumer, which is what needs to be done, NAIS wants to track the product from the processing plant back to the producer when what happens at the processing plant it is not the fault of the producers.

Her testimony was right on the mark and makes it very apparent that NAIS is not about animal health, consumer health, international markets, traceability or terrorism, NAIS is about money, power and control, all intended to put the small producer out of business.

Small producers are looking to those who will fight the implementation of NAIS. Many websites now exist on the internet to help them do that. Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance has authored a document, Review of National Animal Identification System, which is an excellent source for those wishing to understand NAIS or seeking information to help others understand NAIS. NAISinfocentral has information and documents helpful to livestock producers nationwide, including many documents published by the USDA.

One former Farm Bureau member in Arkansas told me that small producers are joining organizations that will fight NAIS; that membership in R-CALF has grown substantially as a result. The sentiments of Arkansas small producers is echoed in other states.

If you have not already done so, please consider going to the Regulations.gov website and leaving your comments concerning NAIS. How long this option will last is unknown.

© 2009 Lynn M. Stuter – All Rights Reserved

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Activist and researcher, Stuter has spent the last fifteen years researching systems theory and systems philosophy with a particular emphasis on education as it pertains to achieving the sustainable global environment. She home schooled two daughters. She has worked with legislators, both state and federal, on issues pertaining to systems governance, the sustainable global environment and education reform. She networks nationwide with other researchers and a growing body of citizens concerned with the transformation of our nation from a Constitutional Republic to a participatory democracy. She has traveled the United States and lived overseas.

Web site: www.learn-usa.com

E-Mail: lmstuter@learn-usa.com

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HR 2749: Our food supply seized by the Merchants of greed

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
greedHR 2749, the “Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009“ is the latest in a series of misguided ”food safety” legislation that  utilizes a failed “one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme”. The legislation is completely absent effective regulation for US food imports and corporate agribusiness behemoths such as Monsanto, ADM, Con Agra and Cargill (primary causes of food safety failures).  HR 2749 clearly favors the increased greed of the corporate industrial food complex while shifting the cost to small, local farmers, local food producers. It must be stopped at once.
There’s more.
According to Farm to Consumer.org, a non-profit organization protecting the constitutional rights of  small family farms and consumers, “this bill would be an “absolute disaster for small farms and artisan food production”.
Here is the skinny on the HR 2749:
HR 2749 gives FDA tremendous power while significantly diminishing existing judicial restraints on actions taken by the agency. Power to Quarantine a Geographic Area; the FDA can also Halt All Movement of All Food in a geographic area.
  • Random Warrantless Searches of Business Records
  • Establishing a Tracing System for Food
  • Severe Criminal and Civil Penalties.
  • Annual Registration Fee of $500
  • Regulation of How Crops Are Raised and Harvested

HR 2749 does not address underlying causes of food safety problems such as industrial agriculture practices and the consolidation of our food supply. The industrial food system and food imports are badly in need of effective regulation, but the HR 2749 does not specifically direct regulation or resources to these areas.

TRACEABILITY OF FOOD OR A BACKDOOR PATH TO THE NAIS

Section 107 of the proposed legislation outlines the use of ”a unique identifier for each facility owned and operated”. I find this section of HR 2749 rather curious if not sneaky, specifically given the overwhelming opposition to the USDA’s, National Animal Identification System (NAIS) and the privacy issues associated. Consider that, HR 2749 requires a person, farm or facility to register, pay annual registration fees and an ID is issued for compliance and traceability. Isn’t this NAIS?

Go here to learn more or sign the petition to end this legislation.

We have a lot to lose:

While corporate agribusiness stresses institutionalized organization, hierarchical decision making, volume, speed, standardization of the food supply and extracting as much production from the land as quickly and impersonally as possible, family farmers and peasants strive through order, labor, pride in the quality of their work, and a certain strength of character and sense of community to take from the land only what it is willing to give so as not to damage its dependability or diminish its sustainability.

But the so-called “conventional wisdom” in agriculture historically has been that through the continual substituting of capital for efficiency and technology for labor “inefficient” farm operators are eliminated by “market forces” while those who survive manage to thrive.

Such “wisdom” also perpetuates the myth that the world’s agricultural system is still dominated by independent family-operated farms and with the ever-increasing elimination of “inefficient producers” — “excess human resources” — we will witness a never-ending expansion of production to feed the world.

Nowhere has this “conventional wisdom” been more apparent and become the driving force of a nation’s agricultural and food policy than in the United States. Today, such policies derived from such “wisdom” are being exported globally by the U.S. by way of corporate agribusiness and its merchants of greed’s self-serving trade policies. Thus, it is imperative that farm and food policy makers, family farmers, peasants, workers and consumers world wide understand the implications and dire consequences of such “conventional wisdom,” for to ignore or dismiss corporate agribusiness’s inefficiencies as merely anti-capitalist rhetoric is to do so at their own future peril.

AMEN

The excerpt above is from The Merchants of Greed.

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NAIS ~~~~ Death in the rural USA

Monday, June 29th, 2009

by Darol Dickinson 6-29-09

Farmer upside down and destroyed by NAISOver 1000 livestock producer’s businesses die each month in the USA. Many of these family farms and ranches have survived the great depression and weathered the droughts and blizzards. Today a different storm of a political nature is planning to deal the death blows.

Less than 2% of all US residents are involved in livestock production. If our elected Congress and Senate were average, and they aren’t, there would be about a dozen profitable livestock producers in office. Not so. Most are attorneys, or professional politicians who have never understood the basic business of farm production, growing of raw materials, ownership of land, water, and crops. Most have young staff members who handle their phone calls about farming concerns. They have less experience in livestock production than the elected ones, but perhaps a degree in political science.

Recently Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro said about livestock producers that they were “fool hearted” and “misinformed” when refusing to surrender to NAIS premises enrollment. Although her area of the US is one of the least dependent on agriculture production in the nation, she is a key player in US agriculture policy. She has never invested in livestock nor shown a profit from any segment of the US agriculture industry. She is working wholeheartedly to pass laws to increase enforcements against farmers.

The US rancher, and farmer (there is a difference) will work from dawn to dark, turn on the tractor lights and continue. They will risk drought, dangerous personal jobs, and invest in crops that will be harvested years into the future. They will compete for faithful ranch employees when local government jobs pay two and three times more than farm labor. They will do business with large amounts of borrowed money and expect slow returns.

Family Farms will look like this after NAIS and HR 875Regardless of risks, the hours, and the dangers of farm life the US livestock producers work with continually increasing taxes and new federal regulations sucking the last blood of life out of farm families.

There are occasional tractor accidents, truck break-downs, crop failures and livestock that die for various reasons. That is a calculated factor. The good comes with the bad.

During the last five years the USDA has continued hammering NAIS enforcements the direction of livestock owners. They have spent over 150 million dollars promoting NAIS sign ups. Over three million animal owners have refused to surrender to NAIS. Current listening sessions have repeatedly proven that over 95% of participants are totally opposed to NAIS. If, after the listening sessions are ended, USDA determines to have their selfish way, and proceeds with NAIS—–that will be the straw that breaks the rancher’s back.

A tractor wreck is understandable, but why would non agricultural elected ones intentionally wreck the livelihood of farm families with expensive costs and enforcements of no common sense value? If Congress and the Senate approve NAIS, or anything close to it, under any tricky name, their political approval rating with farmers will be considered totally treasonous, and less appreciated than historically infamous, General Benedict Arnold.

For more facts on NAIS, www.naisSTINKS.com.

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Australia’s NLIS a Dismal Failure

Sunday, June 28th, 2009
*This is a report on NLIS in Australia which is a parallel program to the USDA’s NAIS.  dd
Australian Beef Association
(ABN 66 079 048 847)
PO Box 446
26 Desmond Lane
OAKEY QLD 4401
Phone 07 4691 2618
FAX 07 4691 3814
E-mail: austbeef@netspace.net.au

18 June 2009

Australia’s NVD Leads the Major Beef Export Countries in Animal Health Trace-back but RFID NLIS is an Expensive Failure

Australian Beef Association Chairman, Brad Bellinger has released an independent audit of cattle producer NLIS Database accounts.

The Agribusiness Online Report illustrates that NLIS still relies on our National Vendor Declaration paper trail for accurate trace-back. On its own, NLIS is hopelessly misleading despite Australian Cattle Producers spending $370 million on tags and reading charges with a further $40 million invested by State and Federal Governments.

The independent survey confirms failings identified in the December 2006 findings of the Price Waterhouse Cooper Report prepared for Minister McGauran at the instigation of the ABA.

In this latest survey, some 56,905 cattle transactions from 17 PICs were analysed, and it revealed that of the 25573 cattle slaughtered to date, 34.4% never had or had lost their Lifetime Traceability in the NLIS data-base since 2005. It also showed a yearly trend towards a worsening loss of Lifetime Traceability.

Also, additional losses in Lifetime Traceability are being caused by the substantial annual “fall out” rate of RFID tags, which the ABA suspects is at least 3%. Lost tags should be replaced by orange “non breeder “ tags, only adding to the 6% already carrying orange “ non breeder “ tags.

Mr Bellinger said, “Currently a minimum of 16 % of white tagged”breeder” stock plus 6% with orange “non breeder” tags are going to slaughter with lost Lifetime Traceability according to the NLIS database, thereby proving that RFID/NLIS is an ongoing expensive failure. Fortunately all stock movements are accompanied by our respected NVD paper trail, which has guaranteed the integrity of our disease and residue traceability across all Australian cattle transactions for the past 15 years. We have gone backwards with individual RFID. The old system used tail tags, which were much less expensive and actually more effective. The PIC and an individual animal number were on every tailtag in Australia, but the information was never utilized.”

“The audit gives a clear indication of the efficacy of NLIS using RFID tags. Over the coming weeks, Agribusiness Online will be conducting an audit on the NVD or mob-based paper trail, which on preliminary work has accurately followed actual movements of cattle. We will release this second audit when it is completed”, Mr Bellinger stated.

“ABA calls on Minister Burke to come to the aid of the industry that he is meant to represent, and to get rid of compulsory RFID that his political predecessors attached needlessly to Australia’s already world-leading trace-back system,” said Mr Bellinger. ENDS

For more information please contact Lee McNicholl 07 4627 6364 Mob 0427 626 461
Brad Bellinger on 02 6725 4282 Mob 0408 03 8157
John Carter 02 4832 1179 Mob 0427 321 179

For more background information go to our website www.austbeef.com.au

For a copy of the full report please contact the ABA Office on austbeef@netspace.net.au

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State cattle group opposes mandatory ID program

Sunday, June 28th, 2009
By Robert Pore
robert.pore@theindependent.com
Published: Sunday, June 28, 2009 12:16 AM CDT

People are not happy about NAIS

People are not happy about NAIS

Dwindling support for a National Animal Identification System (NAIS) has one Nebraska livestock organization calling on state livestock producers to reject the idea of making the program mandatory.

State producers will have an opportunity on Tuesday to speak their minds about the future of a National Animal Identification System as the U.S. Department of Agriculture has added Nebraska as one of its stops on a national listening tour gathering information on the pros and cons on NAIS.

According to Dave Wright, president of the Independent Cattlemen of Nebraska, his organization is urging ranchers and farmers from across the state to attending the Nebraska NAIS meeting.

Wright said that after five years of voluntary compliance, support for NAIS is very low.

“ICON wants the USDA to see no thread of hope in the cattle country of Nebraska,” he said.

Wright said if the current voluntary system becomes mandatory, the program would fail because the cost of the electronic equipment needed for the tracking system would be “detrimental to the small producer, especially in recent years when profit margins have been almost nonexistent.”

He said both ICON and R-CALF USA question the reliability of the equipment. ICON is an affiliate of R-CALF USA.

“It could be affected or corrupted by any number of processes — loss of electricity, inaccurate information, computer viruses and even capability of producers to operate the delicate equipment in remote areas,” Wright said. “Members also question who can access this information.”

Another flaw, he said, that should “greatly concern cattlemen” is the lack of state jurisdiction.

“All livestock would be treated as one big herd,” Wright said. “The movement of cattle from one location to another is also questionable when one considers a broken fence and herds mixing together.”

He said the program wold be easy for a confined feedlot but would be difficult to implement for cow-calf herds and ranchers.

“How it will deal with livestock lost because of predators, theft or hunters is another question ranchers have,” Wright said.

A great concern, he said, is just how far NAIS can go.

“There is no law to give boundaries to the program,” Wright said. “Livestock owners are very worried about their Fourth Amendment right, which guards against unlawful searches and seizures.”

What concerns Wright is whether U.S. cattle producers will eventually be dictated to by a “global organization” and whether the new program will be a tool for disease eradication or disease and management and control.

Current Nebraska livestock officials are concerned about an outbreak of bovine tuberculosis in Nebraska.

The state’s congressional delegation is asking the USDA, in behalf of the state of Nebraska, for additional assistance to address the TB problem.

What is at stake, the delegation said in a letter recently sent to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, is the impact of the TB outbreak on the economic viability of the state’s billion-dollar cattle industry.

According to Nebraska’s congressional delegtation, 15,000 head of cattle have been quarantined for testing with the TB exposure risk across Nebraska, Colorado and South Dakota.

“This is not just a Nebraska issue or a Midwest issue,” the delegation said in its letter to Vilsack. “Considering the significant amount of beef produced in the Midwest, this problem could affect the beef industry nationwide. The scope and seriousness of this problem demand a federal response.”

Under the proposed National Animal Identification System, its goal is to protect “the health of U.S. livestock and poultry and the economic well-being of those industries by being able to quickly and effectively trace an animal disease to its source.”

According to the USDA, when a disease outbreak occurs, animal health officials need to know:

– Which animals are involved in a disease outbreak

– Where the infected animals are currently located

– What other animals might have been exposed to the disease

Wright said R-CALF and ICON officials are offering “a practical solution for disease management and control.”

He said they want to see disease prevented by limiting foreign sources of beef to our country.

“If imported, the cattle must be tagged or branded with a distinguishable mark, meet health codes and feed standards already required in this country,” Wright said. “Require TB testing – especially on cattle from Mexico. Test imported feed and bone meal.”

He said cattlemen have been very pleased with the current program for disease control within the United States.

They are asking the USDA to follow the directive of the current program and “leave the power of control with each state and tribal livestock office, which have been very successful over the years, but also ask for federal support of these programs with financing.”

“All cattlemen would like to see an increased surveillance of BSE and a tracking system set up for tracking interstate movement of cattle which originate in countries which have a BSE problem,” Wright said. “A disease program should be created for wildlife, which can contaminate a domestic herd of cattle.”

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