{"id":110,"date":"2009-07-29T10:45:25","date_gmt":"2009-07-29T14:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/?p=110"},"modified":"2023-02-08T14:59:01","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T18:59:01","slug":"nais-it-aint-over-until-the-fat-lady-sings-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/?p=110","title":{"rendered":"NAIS — It Ain\u2019t Over Until The Fat Lady Sings"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Written by: Chuck Jolley<\/em><\/a> — Cattle Network<\/a><\/strong>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

She belts one out on Monday. Except \u2018she\u2019 will be a couple of he\u2019s — Brooks and Dunn singing \u2018That ain\u2019t no way to go.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

The heavily promoted comment period for the U.S.D.A.\u2019s National Animal Identification System (N.A.I.S.) listening tour will end on Monday. According to the U.S.D.A., comments received on or before this date will be considered. Hopefully written comments received after the final Omaha meeting will be taken more seriously than spoken comments were during the \u2018live,\u2019 face-to-face meetings.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the roundtables and public listening sessions are complete, I encourage those of you who still would like to share your concerns and suggestions about N.A.I.S. to submit your written comments by August 3,\u201d said Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack, \u201cWe look forward to considering all the feedback before deciding on the future direction of U.S.D.A.\u2019s traceability efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S.D.A. has posted a feedback page on the N.A.I.S. Web site. Whether you\u2019re your for it or against it, go to www.usda.gov\/nais\/feedback<\/a> now to provide your suggestions and comments.<\/p>\n

If Vilsack is counting noses, N.A.I.S. will be deep-sixed on August 4. He announced the listening tour on May 15 as a way to find common ground for the development of the always controversial program. To be painfully blunt, common ground never existed. Only a pitifully small handful of people stood up for a national program during the 14 city tour. The vast majority of the often overly enthusiastic crowd spoke against N.A.I.S. using very specific and occasionally salty language. Trying to talk those people into accepting an animal identification program will be tougher than talking a card-carrying N.R.A. member out of his gun.<\/p>\n

In fact, more than a few N.R.A. card-carrying farmers have promised to show anyone representing NAIS who dares step foot on his or her property a personal collection of fire arms. Barrel end first.<\/p>\n

As a voluntary program, N.A.I.S. might have worked but only with the strongest possible assurances from the U.S.D.A. that \u2018voluntary\u2019 isn\u2019t code for \u2018mandatory\u2019 within a few short years. Even that approach would be a hard sell as most of the speakers were outspoken about their innate distrust of anything that smacked of \u201cHello, I\u2019m from the government and I\u2019m here to help you.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are people who are used to doing it themselves. If any help is needed, it\u2019s neighbor-to-neighbor, not federales to farmers. The mistake the USDA made was trying to organize this program from the top down. Going after the cooperation of state ag agencies and trade associations, they assumed, would win the day and the big boys did fall in line, lured by the promise of an ever expanding foreign trade opportunity. NAIS, though, is a bottom up program. It can only succeed with the consent and cooperation of the hundreds of thousands of small farmers from Portland, ME to Portland OR.<\/p>\n

They said no.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If there is any confusion about the meaning of that word, maybe the U.S.D.A. can understand it a little better by clicking here<\/a>.<\/div>\n

Chuck Jolley is a free lance writer, based in Kansas City, who covers a wide range of ag industry topics for Cattlenetwork.com and Agnetwork.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by: Chuck Jolley — Cattle Network She belts one out on Monday. Except \u2018she\u2019 will be a couple of he\u2019s — Brooks and Dunn singing \u2018That ain\u2019t no way to go.\u2019 The heavily promoted comment period for the U.S.D.A.\u2019s National Animal Identification System (N.A.I.S.) listening tour will end on Monday. According to the U.S.D.A., […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[34,44,37,27,24,25,8],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nais","tag-destroy-small-farms","tag-family-farms","tag-farmers-plead-with-usda","tag-nais-about-control","tag-nais-not-needed","tag-nais-not-wanted","tag-oppose-nais"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}