Scary new legislation in the works.  Do you want to have to microchip and federally register every single animal on your farm, be it a chicken, goat, cow, horse, sheep, etc....  Do you want to have to posess a federal permit to let your hen sit on an egg - then be required to notify the government within 24 hours of the egg hatching to register the new chick????  This isn't an urban legend or some theoritical scenario, but something already written up *and being implemented* as of January 2006 so please read!

Here are some of the aspects of the developing National Animal Identification System (NAIS) that I am concerned about, and every person who has a homestead, or dreams of having a homestead should be concerned about.  This article is edited and resposted with permission:

This USDA-run program has as its goal the registration of every farm animal (including
non-food animals such as horses) in a centralized government database.

This program will require micro chipping of each animal (including all forms of poultry), at the expense of the owner, and a premises ID for every farm which will be linked to a satellite photo and Global Positioning System record (see this link for the USDA website about the
program: www.usda.gov/nais/) 
 
In April 2002 a task force composed of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and over 30 livestock organizations provided leadership in creating the animal  identification system. Small-scale farmers involved in animal husbandry, homesteaders, and animal hobbyists were not represented. 
 
While associations, organizations, etc. may be backing the NAIS, they did not inform their members of this proposed legislation. Chances are the members still have no idea that their
freedoms are being given away. 
  
Should the NAIS become law, we will be forced to pay fees to register our farms and animals. "Even with public funding, there will be costs to producers." (Plan, p. 11)
 

We will be forced to report to the national animal records repository within a short-term specified timeframe the birth, death, and loss of identification device, sale, or movement of any animal in our possession.

We will be required to report to the national animal records repository when an animal we own attends a livestock show, participates in a trail ride, is transported to another farm for stud service, or takes part in a community parade, etc.

Our personal information collected through NAIS could be disclosed - "the USDA cannot assure the confidentiality of all the information at the present time." (Plan, p. 15) Financial institutions were not able to keep this information confidential, so it is no surprise that USDA
cannot guarantee confidentiality.

The NAIS will violate the religious beliefs of minority faith communities by requiring them to become part of this computerized, technology-dependent system or abandon the livestock ownership necessary for their way of life. (Many adherents raise their own food animals and
use animals in farming and for transportation. Some, by scriptural teaching, would refuse to take the "mark" of such a numbering system.)

Our livestock would become part of the "national herd." (Plan, p.8)
 
Not only would small farm operators be negatively affected by the NAIS, but this legislation will do serious damage to feed store owners, farm supply houses, hatcheries that sell and ship day-old poultry, and other businesses frequented by farmers.
 
The most common types of meat contamination in the U.S. are the occurrences of pathogens such as Listeria or E. Coli in processed meat. When meat becomes contaminated at a large packing plant, millions of consumers in all 50 states are exposed to the dangerous product.
Government should enact a law to closer scrutinize the large commercial confinement food sources such as the giant broiler operations, the feed yards that produce beef, the large commercial turkey operations, laying houses, and the confinement hog farms. Because of over-crowded conditions and the general biological by-products of animal production,
these are the places most likely to contribute in the spreading of infectious disease, not the premises of small producers. If our government is indeed concerned with BSE, why does it not test every slaughtered animal? In fact, if you look at the USDA's prior actions, you will see it does not care to test every animal slaughtered and in fact forbids it. 
 
Because small-scale farmers were not informed of the proposed NAIS legislation, it appears that we are willing to enter a 'voluntary' program as a justification of making the NAIS mandatory. 

Implementing the NAIS without allowing producers, rather than organizations, to have input and a voice is, in my mind, a grave disservice to all farm families. This program would create millions of criminals out of honest people on the small family farms and homesteads; those who refuse to surrender their rights without a fight. The NAIS and this type of program is in direct opposition to the core values that this country was built upon!
 
The projected estimate for implementation of this plan is 33 billion dollars. Let that sink in for a second. $33,000,000,000.00 to simply implement the plan. That doesn't include the costs to maintain it once it's begun. That is $115.78 for every single man, woman and child in the
US. It does not include the costs for farmers to microchip their animals either, so those who raise the food get to pay even more for this plan.

Those who raise food for their own consumption have absolutely no way of recouping the cost of this program, either, whereas commercial operations will pass the cost onto the consumer.
 
This plan cannot and will not do anything to make our food supply safer at all. It's purportedly necessary to protect us from potential bio-terrorism. How? It's impossible to protect anything through registration. The only thing that can be done is to trace its movements from point A to B to C, on and on ad infintum, and destroy the small farmer's ability to provide for themselves. This plan will create a veritable monopoly by corporate agriculture and thereby seriously
endanger our national economy and our food supply by creating a society that is 100 percent dependent on the government for their food needs. Those of us who value self-sufficiency and personal responsibility reject this mindset wholeheartedly!
 
If the real purpose of NAIS is to track the food supply for instances
like mad cow disease then:
 
1) NAIS is not necessary for horses, donkeys, guardian animals or other non-food animals - these animals are not going to enter the human food chain in our country and should NOT be tracked by the government. There are already safeguards in place for preventing the spread of disease in horses. Regulations that would require implantation of a chip to track movement and registration of premises keyed to Global Positioning System coordinates is an invasion of privacy and makes no sense for a hobby farmer who raises alpacas or a family with a pet pony.
 
2) NAIS is not necessary for sales direct to the consumer from the farm.  In these cases there is already far better tracking of the food chain. I am more confident in the safety of food raised on small farms than that which is commercially raised in confined, disease-promoting
environments, pumped full of vaccines and antibiotics to counter the effect of confinement and mass slaughtered in unsanitary packing plants where the employees have no personal pride in the quality of the product they touch each and every day. If NAIS is forced on small hobby farmers and homesteaders, hundreds of thousands if not millions of individuals may have to give up farming if they cannot afford expensive RFID readers or cannot keep up with the excessive reporting required by NAIS.
 
3) NAIS should not be at all involved with people who are raising livestock for their own family consumption. They know exactly where the food came from - they raised it. There is no need to have any government involved in our own kitchens and food that we raise in our own backyards. I see raising food for our families as a basic human right that should not be interfered with by government.
 
4) NAIS is a violation of the religious freedoms of Americans whose beliefs make it impossible for them to comply. For example, the Amish choose to farm and live without technology according to their beliefs and this system is a threat to their way of life.
 
NAIS if implemented, should be required only for those large commercial operations where the health, welfare, and safety of livestock is disregarded in favor of profit. Commercial operations are responsible for the bulk of the meat and dairy product consumed throughout the United States, and they are responsible for the vast majority of disease and illness and contamination found in these products. They can absorb the cost of such an endeavor; the small family farmer cannot and should not!
 
Inclusion of small farmers, homesteaders, and backyard hobbyists requiring identification of animals that will never make it into in the food chain, or even requiring pets be identified strongly suggests ulterior motives by the government such as invasion of privacy. The plan, as it stands, will undoubtedly result in financial hardship for those already at risk, serving only to enhance the bottom line of special interest groups. Further, the overwhelming scope of such an endeavor begs failure as tracking the movement of animals, such as horses, will require considerable resources while providing no subsequent value to protection of the food chain. 
 
I ask that you familiarize yourself with the details of the National Animal Identification System and consider the consequences to the personal freedoms and religious beliefs which our forefathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters have fought and died for, and continue to
fight, so bravely to defend. In my humble opinion this is the most destructive proposal against personal liberty that I have yet to encounter.

(end of resposted article)

More information about this program and the potential problems can be found at http://www.stopanimalid.org/ .  Anyone who raises animals and wants to keep having the freedom to do so without:  1. Having to be independently weathly in order to microchip all their animals.  2. Having limitless time to jump through repeated federal hoops - this is not a one-time registration thing!  This is constant regulation and reporting!  3. Willing to have their land and property subject to federal invasion at whim, needs to fight this.  If we do nothing, we lose serious freedom here.  There isn't a much more basic freedom than being able to supply yourself and family with food.  This isn't the time for sitting on one's thumbs and figuring "someone else" will do something.

Q.  What do you call it when government takes away the rights of use of private property, but leaves the title in the name of the property owner?

A.  Fascism