Protect Our Food – Stop the Animal Identification System

Big Ag corporations have manipulated our government’s policies to increase their profits and hurt both small farmers and consumers (think Wall Street versus Main Street).  One of the worst programs they have developed is the National Animal Identification System (NAIS).   This issue is among the ideas being voted on at Change.org. Please take a few seconds to click over and vote to Stop NAIS! If Stop NAIS is one of the Top 10 Ideas for Change in America, based on this competition, it will gain significant press attention and support when it is presented to the Obama Administration.

NAIS is a plan to tag and track every single livestock animal – right down to grandma’s laying hen and kids’ pet ponies.  In most cases, the plan calls for electronic tagging, such as microchips and RFIDs.  NAIS will drive local family and organic farms out of business and impose burdens on everyone from recreational horse owners to people in poverty who are trying to raise food for themselves.  NAIS will enrich the corporations that already control most of our food supply, at the expense of both farmers and consumers.

For many, the sound bite of “tracking every animal” sounds like a good idea.  After all, surely people should know where their food comes from?!  I agree completely with informing consumers and holding people accountable for the safety and quality of our food supply.  The problem is that NAIS, although it sounds good, will do exactly the opposite – it will make our food supply less safe.

The first reason NAIS will do nothing for food safety is that it ends when the animal dies. According to the CDC, most food borne illnesses are the result of contamination at the slaughterhouse and food processing/ handling facilities.  And with a typical burger patty containing meat from 50 to 100 cattle from multiple states and two to four countries, tracking individual live animals doesn’t translate to safer burgers.  NAIS ends before the real problem begins!

And the ultimate effect of NAIS will be to make food less safe.  NAIS favors factory farms and burdens small and sustainable farms.  The Big Ag companies ensured that NAIS had a loophole for them.  Factory confinement farms, raising thousands of chickens or hogs in a building filled with their own waste and fed poisons and hormones, would be able to use “group identification.”  Yet small farmers, such as a pastured poultry farmer, will be stuck tagging each and every animal, right down to their individual chickens.  It’s not just an issue of cost, although that is significant – it’s also a question of time and labor.  For many farmers, it simply would be impossible to comply.

So which food is safer?  Factory farmed meat from animals who are often too sick to even walk, processed in slaughterhouses that abuse immigrant labor and kill thousands of animals a day under horrific conditions?  Or meat from animals raised on pasture, eating what Nature intended them to eat, and who face the end of their lives in a small, family-owned slaughterhouse that carefully processes perhaps a few dozen animals a week?  Food produced by mega-corporations whose only legal responsibility is to make money for their shareholders, or food raised by a small farmer who feeds that same food to his own family and looks you in the eye when he sells you the package?

At the very least, don’t we want a choice between those two food systems in this country?  NAIS will deprive people of that choice, by driving our small and sustainable farmers out of business.

Even if you don’t eat animal products, similar plans are in the works for tracking every piece of produce, with similar devastating effects on small and sustainable produce growers.

USDA’s original plan called for NAIS to be mandatory by 2009.  After a public outcry, USDA changed its tune to claim that NAIS would be “voluntary at the federal level.”  But USDA continues to use both carrots and sticks to push NAIS.  Parts of the program have been implemented on a mandatory basis in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Indiana, while other states have used coercion and deception to increase participation.  The USDA recently wrote a memo that makes the first stage of NAIS (the registration of people’s property) mandatory for anyone who does anything under an existing disease control program.  Under pressure from USDA, several states have adopted laws authorizing state implementation of NAIS that include heavy fines and even criminal penalties.

President-Elect Obama can easily stop this program by directing the new USDA Undersecretary of Marketing and Regulatory Programs to stop implementing NAIS.  Please support a healthy and safe food supply, that provides a truly sustainable future for us all.  Vote at Stop NAIS!

INFORMATION ON CHANGE.ORG:

The Ideas for Change in America competition was created in response to Barack Obama’s call for increased citizen involvement in government. The final round of voting began on January 5 and is comprised of the top 3 rated ideas from each of the 30 issues in the first round of the competition, which collectively received more than 250,000 votes.

The top 10 rated ideas from the final round will be presented to the Obama administration on January 16th at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, co-hosted by the Case Foundation. At the event we will also announce the launch of a national advocacy campaign behind each idea in collaboration with our nonprofit partners to turn each idea into actual policy.

Change.org IS NOT Obama’s official site.  It is a social entrepreneurship venture and Netroots Nation is a partner organization. See their website for more information

Please help small sustainable farmers to protect our core values: human health, the environment, and animal welfare.  Help us to Stop NAIS!

For more information about NAIS and to stay informed on how you can help, visit Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance