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TechnoratiCongress Takes Another Potshot at Family Farmers
Many parents were appalled when we saw on our television screens a video of workers abusing a downer cow with electric shocks because the cow was too sick to stand up. We were even more horrified to learn that meat from that cow had gone into lunches served by the federal School Lunch Program.
The scandal at the Hallmark/Westland plant in Chino, Calif., has sparked interest in the trend of securing local meat from sources that are grass-fed, organic and come from animals raised humanely. Our kids deserve the safest meat in their food. Sadly, Congress is now considering squashing such efforts to get local foods into the School Lunch Program.
In June, the House Appropriations Agriculture Subcommittee, at the behest of Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said it was considering a provision that would force schools to buy meat for the School Lunch Program from sources enrolled in the federal government's National Animal Identification System. NAIS is hugely controversial among family farmers like me. The U.S. government wants us to inventory, identify and track the movement of all agriculture-related animals. Step one is a premise registration where a federal ID number is assigned to a farm. The second step involves tagging each animal with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. And finally, farmers must report to the government any planned movement of animals.
These onerous and far-reaching conditions have spawned a revolt among many of us seeking to provide high-quality, safe food for consumers and our communities. Most animal disease occurs in factory farm operations, where thousands of animals are confined in filthy conditions. Yet perversely, factory farms are allowed to have one group ID number, while my 60 cow grass-based dairy would need individual RFID tags that cost $3 each in Wisconsin, even with government subsidies. Then I would be forced to purchase a $1,000 electric wand in order to read the tags and report animal movements to the government.
Animals from horses to alpacas to llamas are covered under NAIS and no one is exempt. Little wonder that so many farmers across the United States have expressed their anger at this Big Brother program that threatens to put us all out of business.
Here in Wisconsin, considered a "model" state for the NAIS program, premise ID has been made mandatory. I received a letter in February 2007 stating that if I did not comply with the Wisconsin law, I would lose my milk producer license. However, I have not signed up.
Folks showing alpacas at breeding shows have been required to chip their animals for $35 apiece.
Instead of cracking down on the industrial livestock operations that are the source of most animal diseases or dealing with the surge in foreign animal imports from countries with foot and mouth disease outbreaks thanks to our free trade agreements, Congress is instead thwarting efforts to provide local, sustainable sources of food to schools.
Tying NAIS to the School Lunch Program would prevent family farmers from accessing this important market. In the wake of the Hallmark/Westland recall, many school districts began seeking local sources of meat and attempting to get more organic and grass-fed beef into schools. Those farm-fresh options would be limited if Congress chooses to link the program to NAIS.
Wisconsin family farmers have further reasons to be suspicious about the use of NAIS to contain animal disease. Currently, the premise ID database in Wisconsin is run by a private nonprofit called the Wisconsin Livestock Identification Consortium. A look at the board of the WLIC shows it to be a who's who of corporate agribusiness interests, including Cargill, the Wisconsin Pork Association, and the Wisconsin Cattlemen's Association. None of these groups has ever shown much interest in food safety or more regulation over our meat processing plants. The WLIC membership shows no less than four radio ID tag companies.
Is NAIS really about consumer safety or fattening the profits of corporate agribusiness and electronic tag companies? The more our state and local governments try to coerce me into joining, the more I can't help but be suspicious. Consumers desiring food from local food sources instead of factory farms should be equally troubled.
Jeff Pausma is a grass-based dairy farmer in Fox Lake and a member of Family Farm Defenders.
© 2008 Capital Newspapers
21 Comments so far
Show AllPerhaps this will clarify what NAIS is really about.
http://www.populistamerica.com/nais_regressive_offensive_and_unconstitutional
Article says "Instead of cracking down on the industrial livestock operations that are the source of most animal diseases or dealing with the surge in foreign animal imports from countries with foot and mouth disease outbreaks thanks to our free trade agreements, Congress is instead thwarting efforts to provide local, sustainable sources of food to schools." Agreed. One function of such a law is to distract attention from what should be done.
More food inspection, especially of industrial farming, is obviously key to food safety. I don't understand the chip strategy - wait until people get sick and then trace back? Shall we insert chips in tomatoes and peppers too?
I also suspect that some manufacturer with friends in office is selling these chips. In my experience, when there is patently inappropriate and off-the-wall solution to a problem, and that solution legally mandates widespread purchase of a specific product, there is some collusion between the lawmakers and the manufacturers of the product. When you find out the facts, then Eureka! it makes sense.
(On a personal level cutting down on meat consumption and buying from small local producers would help. These big animal farming places depend on our eating lots of poor quality meat.)
The RFID chips confuse the cells around the implanted chips, creating tumors. Look it up.
what do RFID chips taste like? can you get cancer from eating them? Will they confuse scanners once we are all required to have them ? will customs think it's a cow trying to eescape?
Don't forget to research the cancer-causing potentials of the implanted RFID chips. Look up Dr. Katherine Albrecht.
Localism greatly reduces the diseases problem. First by promoting sustainable practices in which disease resistance is maximized. Second, by limiting outbreaks to very small populations. Ahh the beauty of localism...
By the way, if BIG GOVERNMENT would BUTT THE FUCK OUT and stop OVER-SUBSIDIZING Big Agri (especially Big Corn), animals wouldn't be shoved with petro-manufactured corn seeds down their throats followed by petroleum manufactured anti-biotics and even rBGH. Let's bring back grass-fed meat and dairy products !
whatfools is correct. While Klinton supporters such as Kernel and marc who didn't mind Klinton joining the GOP back in 1996 to pass the phoney "Freedom To Farm Act of 1996" and in essense give Big Agri backdoor power, look what happened to the small farmers. More regulations against them while "freedom" given to Big Agri ! By the way, not all Hindus are vegetarian. China and India have caught up to the western ways and they're on their way to kicking the West hard in the ASS.
When I read this article it seemed to me the author is pointing out that meat coming from factory farms is much more likely to be unhealthy and derived from the tortured lives of animals, animals that suffer as much as your pet cat or dog, than meat that comes from a small farm. That seems pretty obvious to me too.
Then the author points out that the Radio Frequency ID tags are more onnerous for the small farm than the giant factory farm that is more likely to be a source of contaminated meat.
Now, I think government regulations and standards are good and more are needed or needed to be enforced in fields from farming to banking to allowing people to vote, but tagging and tracing the movements of every head of livestock in the county seems bizzarely overblown to me. I thought conservatives were against over-regulation and for independence and liberty.
I was under the impression that it was more than just reporting when you sold your animals. IIRC, you have to report births, deaths, sales and any other movements off-farm (fairs, etc.) of the animals within 24 hours. But I read the article describing the act a long time ago, and might be mistaken. If it is true, it's an awful lot of paperwork and a terrible imposition, particularly if they're going to apply it to peoples' pleasure horses and the like. And no, I've not pulled a heifer, but I have pulled a lamb and shot at coyotes and wild dogs and prayed for rain to bring me some grass.
I'm not sure I understand the author's objections. How does he propose that the health authorities be able to track a sick animal back to the farm of origin? If there were something similar possible for veggies, we wouldn't have had that mess we just went through with Salmonella.
"U.S. government wants us to inventory, identify and track the movement of all agriculture-related animals"
You should be doing this for your own records anyhow. If you don't know which of your animals you treated, bred or what have you, then you aren't much of a dairyman. And "track" the movement only means notify that you have sold an animal to a particular sale barn, not follow through afterwards. That's the responsibility of the sale barn.
"Most animal disease occurs in factory farm operations, "
While that may technically be true, I have no data one way or the other, I can say as a dairy vet (ret) that there is no way I would buy a dairy steer from some of my clients, all family farmers. I saw some really filthy farms as well as some nice ones.
" factory farms are allowed to have one group ID number, while my 60 cow grass-based dairy would need individual RFID tags that cost $3 each in "
You also have one number for your farm and then each cow has its id number, and the same for the big farmers as well. Every cow has a chip no matter the size of the farm. The chips cost the same no matter who is buying them. And $3.00 doesn't make much difference in a $3,000 cow, which is what a good, bred heifer is going for these days.
"surge in foreign animal imports from countries with foot and mouth disease outbreaks"
Oh, please!! This is pure and unadultered refuse from the bull pen. This is Fox "News" at its best (worst).
I used to have a bunch of clients with similar attitudes (Langlade County, Central Wisconsin) and every one of them just knew that blacks were all evil gang members, Meskins were druggies although now I hear that most of the farm help comes from Mexico because they can't get anyone else to work for what they pay, and that nonCatholics were going to hell. Some of them never left the county they were born in and very few of them ever traveled further than Milwaukee. The only farmer who had any kind of a normal outlook had been a Peace Corps Volunteer in India.
You want to know what it's about.
Read it and weap. The family farmer is toast.
http://www.gisborneherald.co.nz/Default.aspx?s=3&s1=2&id=4310
"The proposed Emissions Trading Scheme legislation is currently "on ice" while the Government seeks to garner enough support to pass it into law. A website, www.carbonfarming.org.nz allows farmers to enter their own particular statistics, and then gives the amount that farmer has to pay annually.
For a typical Gisborne/East Coast property of one thousand hectares, running 5287sheep, and 988 cattle, the annual amount is $144,236, based on the current carbon value of $42.
The carbon price a month ago was $47 per tonne, making the liability $161,398. The economic farm surplus (EFS) of this average farm is only $145,316. (This is what the farmer needs to pay interest and principal on loans, fund further development, replace machinery, and to make a return on his own investment in the property.)"
Every cattle will be taxed, and the government will want to track this valuable source of revenue. Mark of the beast applies even to cattle. That RFID number is their social security number.
Knowing this stuff is painful. I wish I could go back to sleep and go back to the consensus reality.
far as hindu's go - I saw a program on them from the travel channel. Shit you not some of those folks put cow necter on thier faces. Its a ritual - like holy water! Been cow pissed a couple of times - its foul smelling like the liquid in a blue box (porta-potty to the layperson)
I keep going. have another job - several of them - to supplemant the farm income. Love my cattle, all of them. The pasture full of timothy and we rotate when needed. My little girl takes pride in her animals. My boy is to young to understand - he will. worst comes to worst - I'll F the rules and regs and sell to folks to you kernal - aint nothing like a rib eye. Hell I'll even throw in the pat of butter and the parsley to put on yop - just like they do in St Louis.
whatfools__ You vegetarians remind me of the religious nuts that pound their beliefs down everyones throat. If you want to eat alfalfa hay, it is ok with me, but if I want a good steak or pork chop, it should be ok with you.
marc melchion__ I agree with you, it gets very tiresome to have people that you can tell by their opinions on farming and livestock, have not the slightest idea what they are talking about. It takes most of a lifetime to learn what is involved in the production of crops and stock and you cannot learn it by reading scare articles.
As for the corporations being involved in agriculture, as long as we have a free-enterprise system people are free to enlarge their holdings until they cannot manage them properly, and that usually takes them out, just as some of the big financial operations are now in trouble of their own making.
I discontinued my cattle operation 2 years ago partly because of all of the regulations coming down the pipe that will make life miserable for family farms and ranches. Some of those were adopted because of the big uproar about a small number of animals that was much overblown as we do not have the problem that Britain had , for instance.
Hindu? Sure a-wipe go ahead and splash some cow piss on your face. And don't think some of 'em don't.
The article, like most of the articles on CD, is bull. As a third generation KY farmer from Mt. Olivet I outa know. How about people who have never had to yank a calf from a heifer or prayed for rain to fall on a tobacco field leave us alone. Its like me tellin' a astronaut how to fly a space ship - what the F do I know about space travel? That big AG bill passed a few months ago, well 2/3 of it went to crap big govt programs that you progressives love. On of these days I'm a goin' to stop growing my crops and spot raisin' my cattle and watch a whole buch a progressives turn into Ethopians. Stop the liberal war against the American Farmer!
Maybe the Hindus have something there - eat vegitarian. Save our children and save the planet.
What about rabbits and chickens? And then if we progress to "Soylent Green", what about people?
Amazing.
Of course, when you have a political system based on money, and one where almost always the candidate with the most money wins, this is what you are going to get.
So, the real fix for this isn't in the details of farm legislation, but instead in reforming our election system such that money is no longer the key factor in a political campaign.
Don't hold your breath waiting for the Dems to do that. All they wanted was to be top dog so the bribes, uh contributions, flow to them. If you really want change, you gotta vote for someone else.
Well...the article speaks volumes about the influence of agribusiness (not to be confused with farming) interests in Congress and USDA. It's not DESIGNED to drive small operations out of business, but just to make them that much more difficult to manage vis a vis factory operations.
Yes, our regulatory structure should be targeted at higher risk operations, like factory farms, but agribusiness, the driving force behind factory farms (which should be referred to as collectives), is paying campaign contributions to make regulatory burdens on their businesses lighter, not more intrusive. Regulation is only for small farmers, and for that matter, taxes.
Here in Kansas, the corporatization of agriculture is showing us that corporate farmers don't have a long-term interest in the land that they manage, so windbreaks planted during the Great Depression are being ripped out wholesale in order to maximize short-term production. The fools are too stupid or disinterested to understand that those windbreaks have been a staple defense against wind erosion, and the harm that will come to the land from their removal. There could be 100 similar examples to the windbreak example, and the stupidity articulated by the author. The point is, corporate agriculture has got to be discontinued.