NAIS, friend and foe
The battle is truly that of the people against a rogue government
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Lynn M. Stuter
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.
Mother and wife, Lynn M. Stuter has spent the past ten years researching systems theory with a particular emphasis on education. She home schooled two daughters, now grown and on their own. She has worked with legislators, both state and federal, on issues pertaining to systems governance and education reform.
She networks nation-wide with other researchers and citizens concerned with the transformation of our nation. She has
traveled the United States and lived overseas. Web site: http://www.learn-usa.com/
E-Mail: lmstuter@mail.icehouse.net
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For further information please refer to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
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