{"id":270,"date":"2010-02-10T15:28:09","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T19:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/?p=270"},"modified":"2023-02-08T14:58:59","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T18:58:59","slug":"usda-pretends-to-kill-nais","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/?p=270","title":{"rendered":"USDA Pretends to Kill NAIS"},"content":{"rendered":"

USDA Signals NAIS is Dead<\/h2>\n
2\/8\/2010<\/div>\n
\n\n\n\n\n
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Max Thornsberry<\/em><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

After a long-fought six-year battle, independent cattle producers have finally succeeded in stopping the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), which was an onerous plan conceived by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and promoted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), domestic and multinational ear tag companies, as well as multinational meat packers and their closely aligned trade associations.<\/p>\n

The battle was extremely lopsided. USDA had millions of dollars of taxpayer \tmoney — over $140 million to be precise — to develop and promote NAIS \tand to persuade state departments of agriculture and cattle industry trade \tassociations to recruit as many independent cattle producers as possible \tinto the ill-fated NAIS program. According to the Web site www.usaspending.gov<\/a>, \tthe National Cattlemen’s Foundation, part of the National Cattlemen’s Beef \tAssociation (NCBA), received over $2.1 million from the federal government \tin 2008 to promote NAIS.<\/p>\n

Armed with millions of dollars and six years worth of joint government \tand processing-industry planning, how did NAIS get stopped?<\/p>\n

The answer is that NAIS was stopped by the persistent, relentless pressure \tapplied by a handful of non-conventional organizations that exclusively \trepresented the interests of cattle farmers and ranchers, not the interests \tof the industrialized sectors of the U.S. beef supply chain. This was a \tDavid versus Goliath battle in which David won and the interests of independent \tcattle producers came out on top.<\/p>\n

These recent victories by independent cattle producers, with far less \tpolitical clout and economic power than their conventional beef industry \ttrade association counterparts, strongly suggests that there remains a \tgenuine reason for hope that independent cattle producers can reverse the \tpresent course of their industry — a course that is fast leading toward \tmore and more corporate control over the U.S. cattle industry by beef packers \tthat are capturing control over the live cattle supply chain, just as they \thave already captured control over both the poultry and hog supply chains.<\/p>\n

The beef packers are now focusing their efforts on the feeding sector \tof the cattle industry by purchasing more and more feedlots (JBS recently \tpurchased the nation’s largest feedlot company, Five Rivers Ranch Cattle \tFeeding, L.L.C.) and gaining increased control over the fed cattle market \tthrough the use of new cattle procurement tools, such as certain marketing \tagreements and formula-type contracts that effectively reduce the competitiveness \tof the fed cattle cash market.<\/p>\n

As with every major policy issue victory, the real work begins \t\tnow.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now that NAIS has been scrapped, a new program needs to be developed \tto achieve improvements in the United States’ ability to quickly contain \tand control animal diseases. Independent cattle producers must \tremain directly involved in the development of this new program to ensure \tthat it does not infringe upon their rights and privileges as did NAIS.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is encouraging that when Agriculture Secretary Vilsack announced \the was going to pursue a new approach to animal disease traceability, he \talso announced that the U.S. must strengthen its import controls to prevent \tthe introduction of animal diseases at our borders. This is a high priority \tfor independent cattle producers who intrinsically understand that we cannot \tcontinue importing diseases like BSE, bovine tuberculosis and brucellosis \tif we desire to maintain our industry’s reputation of producing the healthiest \tcattle in the world — a reputation that is<\/em> the U.S. cattle industry’s \tcompetitive advantage in both the domestic market and the global market.<\/p>\n

I encourage every cattle producer to take a new look at the relatively \tnew organizations that have amassed uncanny successes for independent cattle \tproducers despite seemingly impossible odds. Each of the organizations \tthat brought us to where we’re at today is not likely to lead us in a new \tdirection. But some<\/em> of these new organizations will<\/em> and \tthey need your support to continue winning their fight to restore for the \tU.S. cattle industry the opportunity for U.S. cattle producers to maintain \tindependent and profitable cattle-producing businesses all across the United \tStates.<\/p>\n

The future of the U.S. cattle industry is in your hands and will be \tdetermined by which organization you choose to support.<\/p>\n

The NAIS that USDA was attempting to force down the throats \t\tof independent U.S. cattle producers, utilizing our own tax dollars, would \t\thave completely changed the way cattle farmers and ranchers do business.<\/strong><\/p>\n

While obtaining a premises ID number — the first step to a nationwide \tNAIS — required no effort, the second and third steps in the onerous WTO-mandated \tsystem would have been costly, difficult, and, I believe, would have generated \trebellion on the range. Reporting the movement of every animal, once it \tleft its birth farm of origin, was a completely unworkable system for producers, \tespecially those operating in our most populous cow states, where the average \tcowherd size is 30 to 40 mother cows.<\/p>\n

Imagine having to get your cattle in a chute, read the tags electronically, \tand report the numbers to USDA every time you moved a set of calves to \tanother pasture, your Dad’s place, or sent a group of calves to the sale \tbarn. Not only were you going to be required to read the tags electronically, \tbut you were going to be required to report the tag numbers to the appropriate \tauthorities within 48 hours of that movement, or you would be out of compliance \tand subject to enforcement fines: A range rebellion in the making, and \tcompletely unnecessary for a first world country like the United States.<\/p>\n

At least for the time-being, the government has listened to \t\tthe people.<\/strong> A spike has been driven into the heart of a one-world \t\tgovernment’s dictatorial rule.<\/p>\n

Maybe our Constitution is not dead?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

USDA Signals NAIS is Dead 2\/8\/2010 Max Thornsberry After a long-fought six-year battle, independent cattle producers have finally succeeded in stopping the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), which was an onerous plan conceived by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and promoted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), domestic and multinational ear tag companies, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3],"tags":[7,34,23,41,40,27,45,8,32,127,58],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-codex-alimentarius","category-nais","tag-corruption-in-government","tag-destroy-small-farms","tag-dump-nais","tag-fascism","tag-government-collusion","tag-nais-about-control","tag-nais-kills-competition","tag-oppose-nais","tag-usda-not-trustworthy","tag-usda-pretends-to-kill-nais","tag-vilsack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","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=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":401,"href":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions\/401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amishinternet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}