Burns Best Farm

Farm Bill Alert in Congress

I'm passing along a message I got via the NONAIS Yahoo! group. There is a very short window of opportunity to voice your opinion on the upcoming Farm Bill:  what should be in, what should be out, and what is downright dumb.  {Edit: If you are already familiar with NAIS, skip to the last paragraph, then click the link and send the Ag Committee your thoughts.}

In particular, this is a chance to tell the Agriculture Committee exactly what you think about the National Animal Identification System, the proposed effort to tag every single farm animal in America with a radio frequency tracking device.  If you are unfamiliar with this serious overreach of authority, there are lots of places to read up on it.  In a nutshell, the small farmers would be required, at their own expense, to tag their animals and then file reports to their local USDA office detailing the whereabouts of their livestock.

If you take a laying hen into town for show and tell at the 4-H club meeting, you have to file two reports:  one about the hen leaving the farm, the second telling the government the hen made it home safely.  If you decide to butcher the hen, you'll need to tell the government that info, too.  If a coyote makes off with one of your hens and leaves the other 24 alone, you have to figure out which of your original 25 hens was stolen, and then file a report with USDA.

Meanwhile, the Large Corporate Poultry Producer and Processor in the next county is not required to tag individual birds.  They get to assign a lot number to the whole house of chickens.  So one radio tag number for 25,000 hens.

So here's the link to the Ag Committee website, and you can tell them what you think there. The time frame is short:  today, I think is the deadline.  Stand up for the small farmer and take a couple of minutes to voice your opinions.

><http://agriculture. house.gov/ inside/feedbackf orm.html>

If you need more info on why NAIS is very, very bad, go to this website and read up.

<http://action. downsizedc. org/wyc.php? cid=46>.

Thanks!

Denise

{Edited at 5:20pm to add a clarification note at top, and to clean up a run-on sentence and narrow the paragraph spaces.}

NAIS - Opposition

05:29, 2007-Jan-4 .. Posted by MamaDuke

We, too, are very familiar with what the NAIS is going to do to the American farmer, small homesteader and FFA organization. We are dead-set against it and have voiced our opinions with our representatives, both local and state.

I'm glad to see that others are out there voicing their opinions, also. There's an organization called Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance (the head of this organization is an attorney working solely on stopping the NAIS). Their website is: http://www.farmandranchfreedom.org/.

We are members of the organization and are doing "grassroots efforts" to help spread the word of what the NAIS is doing.

Also, I submitted my information and concerns to the Agriculture Committee just now. The deadline was 12/31/06 but I figured, why not?

Good luck on your end and we'll keep it up on our end and maybe we'll see some work result from our efforts!

Thanks for the added info, MamaDuke

05:33, 2007-Jan-4 .. Posted by MrsBurns

You're right about the deadline....for some reason, the message fowarded into the Yahoo group didn't arrive until last night so it showed up in my box today. I, too, completed the form and I hope my opinion makes it into the pile even though it's late. Thanks for reading! Denise

Untitled Comment

06:54, 2007-Jan-4 .. Posted by farmgal35

I have been hearing something about this bill. It seems like the land of the free is getting less free. The government is getting to the point they are taking our freedoms way. I try to support my government as much as I can but sometimes, I just don`t understand were it is coming from. Some of the bills they want to pass is just unreal. Unless they live it they don`t know it. I don`t think they understand just how hard it can be on the American farmer. Where will the family farms be in twenty years from now. I guess coming from a person whose family were tobacco farmers for years. All the laws just made it hard for small tobacco farmers. It just got harder and other things to. Oh I should just shut up that way I won`t upset anyone. I do know what you mean.