![\"Darol](\"http:\/\/foodfreedom.files.wordpress.com\/2009\/11\/darol-dickinson-texaslonghorn-oh-cropd3.jpg?w=240&h=300\" "\\"Darol")
Darol Dickinson<\/p><\/div>\n
NAIS, the national animal identification system, is a big government boondoggle that can easily be compared to President Obama\u2019s plan to borrow trillions of dollars, much of it from the Chinese, to save a bad economy that was created in the first place by too much borrowing. NAIS will NOT make our food safer, but it will most certainly make thousands of small stockmen disappear. It will require ranchers to spend a great deal of money on equipment, inserting the chips, and reporting any changes, with terrible fines for computer errors, acts of nature, or noncompliance. Yet factory farms are exempt from those same rules.<\/p>\n
The USDA is pushing it partly to show they are doing something about the pitiful state of food safety, which they have botched BIG TIME. The original NAIS plan caused such a backlash that in November 2006 the USDA backtracked and said, \u201cWe must emphasize that NAIS is a voluntary program at the Federal level, and USDA has no plans to make participation in any component of the program mandatory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just as you\u2019d expect, now the USDA is most definitely making noises that the plan must be made mandatory.<\/p>\n
If the NAIS gravy train is derailed, most of the credit can be given to one man: Darol Dickinson. The famous Longhorn breeder and artist has already been named a member of the Digest 25, but his efforts on NAIS on behalf of all cattlemen deserve another laudatory trajectory launched in his honor.<\/p>\n
Darol remembers when he came to hate the whole idea behind NAIS. \u201cWhen I attended my first USDA listening session about NAIS the leader lied to everyone. He said NAIS would happen, we would not have a choice, sign up now.\u201d (Needless to say, Darol did not sign up.)<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said that hoof and mouth would devastate the US cattle business overnight, then with one phone call to Texas A & M, at Uvalde, Texas, I found cattle with Hoof and Mouth were still good to eat and the disease was only a skin thing. He told me Anthrax could sweep the nation and could kill every cow. I made one phone call and found out for 80 cents anyone can buy an Anthrax vaccine and never have an Anthrax problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Darol recalls, \u201cThen the USDA began to give out \u2018cooperative agreements\u2019 to hire people to enroll in NAIS premises. I call these agreements more simply, \u2018bribes.\u2019 Bribes is what you give someone to do something they don\u2019t want to do, then they do it, against their better judgment. The basis of NAIS was deception without necessity\u2014paid for by all taxpayers. All of the above made my blood boil.\u201d Darol began to paw in the dirt like a mad bull.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the first time in my life I had an opportunity to oppose a vicious federales program that would put my fellow livestock producers under with red tape, enforcements, fines and destroy new business. I, by choosing this battle with USDA could save billions in losses to ranchers and honest farmers. At a cost of my own cattle sales over the last 4 years, I have worked 4 to 18 hours a day opposing NAIS.<\/p>\n
Darol is one of the leading, if not THE leading Longhorn breeder in the country, and has been for decades. His efforts on NAIS have horribly reduced his business sales and profits. \u201cHad we not sold an occasional high dollar Texas Longhorn bull,\u201d says Darol, \u201cit would not have been possible to fight this nasty war.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continues, \u201cFrom early 2005, after the first smoke was blown up my hub cap from USDA, I have carefully researched NAIS. One after another promises from USDA promoters are either false, worthless or just plain ignorant. The concept of NAIS is designed by white shirted, clean handed veterinarians in marble hall offices with high salaries and retirements that would impress Oprah. The NAIS designers have not stepped in enough nasty corral stuff to know the basic business of livestock.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe next mystery is why AQHA, NCBA, Farm Bureau, Beef Magazine and Drover Magazine do not stage a hissy-fit opposing NAIS and what it will do to their membership and subscribers. When I can\u2019t understand common sense things, I assume they have been bought, and it is true. The slimy USDA bureaucrats with thick brief cases have made their rounds and millions have been bought to their own guilt and shame.\u201d<\/p>\n
Darol\u2019s first attempt at a web sight opposing NAIS was web site www.naisSucks.com. \u201cThe name was chosen due to the puking nasty program it is,\u201d says Darol, who, it can be said, is not what you\u2019d call a politically correct person.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not a fair and balanced person,\u201d says Darol. Some publications refused to reference www.naisSUCKS.com due to the off color connotation so Darol changed the name to accommodate kinder, gentler people. \u201cWe changed it to www.naisSTINKS.com and retained the same articles.\u201d Either way, when you read a SUCKS or STINKS article it will not leave you straddling a fence by a writer who couldn\u2019t figure it out.<\/p>\n