Opinion:
National Animal Identification System has potential to harm small farmers
by Eran Shelby, posted Dec. 21, 2009
Living in a farming community and belonging to a family filled with cattle farmers, I have been around cattle all of my life. For as long as I can remember, my family has gotten along successfully using their own method of identifying cows by branding, ear notching and using a medical identification tag in the ears of cattle.
Yet, there is a proposed method that would change the process of identifying livestock that has the potential to put small farmers out of business — the National Animal Identification System.
In theory, NAIS has a useful goal to identify all animals and premises potentially exposed to a diseased animal within 48 hours after discovery. The USDA said this form of identification protects the health and economic well being of the U.S. livestock industry. They expect the program to be helpful to everyone, but in truth, it will only hurt small family farmers while helping larger companies and packers to thrive.
Burleigh Wheeler owns Wheeler and Son’s Livestock Auction in Osceola, Mo., and has strong feelings on the issue.
“If this system were to become mandatory, small farmers would go completely out of business,” Wheeler said. “If small farmers went out of business, meat packers would have more control over markets and prices. If packers have control, consumers would be purchasing their meat form large-scale farms instead of small ones, thus increasing prices.”
In January 2008, the NAIS became voluntary after the federal government refused to make it mandatory because of massive disapproval from rural Americans.
“It is difficult to make something mandatory when it has no federal backing,” Judy McCullough of the Independent Cattlewomen of Wyoming in the Tri-State Livestock News.
This was because the USDA was not effectively implementing the system, nor were they informing producers and manufactures of how much the system would cost, she said.
In August 2009, Tom Steever of Brownfield Ag News said: “The Senate agreed to scale back funding for the National Animal Identification System.” He went on to say that senators slashed funding in half to $7.3 million, which is said to only be used for proposed rule making, not for implementation, and the House’s agriculture spending bill eliminated all funding for the program for the next fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
The implementation of this plan is broken into three steps: premise registration, animal identification and animal tracking. The USDA is trying to enforce this system into rural American farmers by shifting its dollars to premise registration.
Through Premise ID, farmers create a record of the locations where they raise, hold or board their livestock. Locations are identified by a premise identification number or PIN.
“Premise registration is not much better since it’s the first step in the NAIS process,” Wheeler said.
A group called R-CALF USA, the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America, represent thousands of U.S. cattle producers on domestic and international trade, and marketing issues. R-CALF USA is a national, non-profit organization and is dedicated to ensuring the continued profitability and viability of the U.S. cattle industry.
R-CALF claims the NAIS is a fundamentally flawed system that would hamper disease investigations and the costs of NAIS will only worsen the ongoing and long-run lack of profitability for U.S. cattle producers.
The USDA’s cost benefit analysis summary said the tags and tagging costs to implement the NAIS vary among cattle producers costing from $3.30 to $5.22 per head, depending on current identification practices. For farmers that do not have a USDA-approved identification process in use, this could cost them a significant amount of money.
Most people are unaware of the huge impact the NAIS will have on everyone in America. “The NAIS is another sneaky, costly program stating Homeland Security, but this is not the type of homeland security you are thinking of and has received no media coverage to warn consumers of a new national threat of terrorist chickens, cows, horses, pigs, sheep, and llamas,” McCullough said.
The Americans who do not own chickens, cows, horses, pigs’ sheep or llamas are not out of the water, either. The Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance said this system will not only affect livestock but also dogs, cats, and companion animals. If the NAIS is effective in cattle identification, it will be applied to dogs, cats and companion animals. This means every time your dog, cat or other companion leaves your property, it will have to be documented with your state.
Everyone wants safe meat, and consumers can be assured that the NAIS is not the only way to ensure that the meat we are eating is safe. In October 2008, a program called Country of Origin Labeling was made mandatory. COOL labels all meat imported into the U.S. with the country it is exported from. This means when you purchase food from the grocery store, you should easily see where your meat was produced. This system is cost effective and farmer friendly. By using the COOL program instead of NAIS, consumers could assume all unlabeled meat is American. As a mandatory system, COOL is just as effective as the NAIS without the added cost to farmers such as Wheeler and other rural Americans.
I do not think NAIS is the appropriate way to label the meat American’s consume. NAIS would contribute to added cost for farmers and would later affect owners of companion animals. COOL is serving the same purpose as the NAIS without the added cost.
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