Today, August 31st, 2006 is the final day to send comments to the Vermont Agency of Agriculture regarding their proposed mandatory Premises Registration. The hearings are all over. Supposedly Secretary of Agriculture Steve Kerr has stopped the proposed rule and will not cooperate with the USDA on NAIS. Still it is very important to get comments in. Here’s mine:
Vermont Agency of Agriculture
attn. Premises Registration
116 State Street Drawer 20
Montpelier, VT 05620
Email: animal.health@agr.state.vt.us
Dear Agency of Agriculture:
I object to the proposed Premises Registration rule. Under no circumstance should Vermont create a mandatory Premises Registration system nor should Vermont work with the USDA or other Federal agencies on the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) or other programs that would force small farmers and homesteaders to participate in the programs.
Premises Registration is not an effective way to prevent or control disease. There are existing channels of communication including the internet, phone, newspapers, radio, television, word of mouth, US Mail, general stores and poster boards. Anyone who is so out of touch that they will not get the news by one of these means is not a threat to society. The proposed Premises Registration system wastes time and money with little to no return on investment. We have other far more pressing social needs for those tax dollars.
NAIS and Premises ID do nothing for Mad Cow (BSE) - just stop feeding cows to cows, don’t eat downers and for over age beef, test. More importantly, pasture your cattle. Pasture fed cattle don’t get BSE. It’s that simple.
NAIS and Premises ID do nothing for Foot & Mouth Disease (FMD) - vaccinate and let the animals weather the disease if it occurs. Most animals survive and develop immunity. There is no need for mass slaughter. What every we do we must avoid the dumb, disastrous reaction of the British to FMD that has destroyed their nation’s agriculture.
NAIS and Premises ID do nothing for Avian Flu (AI) - AI is a disease that is carried by wild birds although there is evidence that it is the crowded conditions of Asian factory farms that created the disease. Backyard chickens are merely terminal hosts and as long as you don’t suck the mucus from your bloody cock, eat raw duck’s blood pudding, etc you shouldn’t get AI. A little common sense goes a long ways. The government’s reaction to AI is scarier than AI itself. The fact that cats can get AI and can pass it to people but the government is not interested in tracking premises with cats demonstrates that disease control and monitoring is not the real reason behind NAIS and Premises ID. Grandma’s egg hen isn’t a threat to society. It is the airplane travelers from distant lands who will most likely bring AI to our shores. If the government wants to stop AI, stop air travel or quarantine incoming passengers & crew. But they won’t since AI is not the real issue.
NAIS and Premises ID do nothing for preventing any other disease either. If you want to prevent disease then the most effective thing we can do to fight disease is to raise a diverse ensemble of healthy animals under humane conditions on pasture. Factory farming and feedlots are the antithesis of this practice. If the USDA and Vermont Agency of Agriculture wish to fight animal disease then they’ll crack down on the factory farms and feedlots which are hotbeds of disease and animal cruelty. Just as importantly the USDA needs to do its job of testing and inspecting the large processors because that is where virtually all food borne illness originates. NAIS and Premises ID do nothing to track disease onset in the processor, the butcher, the slaughterhouse despite the fact that those places are the source of almost all contamination.
So, I ask myself, if preventing and curing disease is not the real reason, then why does the government want to know where very chicken, cow, pig, horse and other animal is? So they can kill them with their “Stamp Out” and depopulation programs. That is a clear violation of our 4th Amendment rights. Dr. Kerry has said that we won’t have depopulation in Vermont without testing, contrary to the wishes of the USDA. I would like to believe him but I fear he many not have the power to stop a social disaster like they had in Britain, India, Germany and other lands when over zealous politicians went for the quick fix - killing animals - to show that they were doing something so as to placate the masses. That is bad science and frankly bad politics as well. Most of all it is bad farming.
Mandatory Premises Registration is a violation of our fundamental rights to privacy. The government should not be invading our homes and farms making demands and micro-managing our lives. NAIS is even worst with it’s clear violations of multiple sections of our Constitution including Amendments 1, 4, 5, 14 and possibly 13 as well. Let us not waste time and money with regulations that should be tossed out by the courts for being unconstitutional. Instead focus on providing education and information that livestock owners can avail themselves of. That is the way to a better society.
The sentiments of Vermonters at the hearings both in the spring and this summer have been overwhelmingly running at greater than 20 to 1 against the Vermont Agency of Agriculture’s proposal for Premises Registration. Bureaucrats should not be allowed to force regulations on us that are objected to by such an overwhelming majority. We are democracy and the people have spoken, they do not want mandatory Premises Registration.
Premises Registration should not be made mandatory. Furthermore, if a Premises Registration regulation is created in any way, shape or form then it should be done as a two tier system where homesteaders, small farmers, anyone selling direct and pet livestock owners should be specifically exempt from the system. It is the factory farms and feedlot operations that are a threat to society, animal health and human health. Small farmers and homesteaders are the diversity that will save us in troubled times. They should be encouraged and cherished, not extinguished under the burden of heavy handed government.
Just as we do not have the Health Department, OSHA and the FDA telling us how to work in our home kitchen and non-employee small businesses we should not have the Vermont Agency of Agriculture or the USDA invading our homesteads and small farms. More government mandates is not the solution. What we need is information, articles, research into better sustainable methods of farming so that the factory farms can be replaced with more locally grown produce and meat. Is it not the Vermont Agency of Agriculture which makes a big deal about “Buy Local”?
If the Vermont Agency of Agriculture wishes to do something positive to help with animal disease they will do more voluntary outreach to homesteaders and small farmers instead of focusing so hard on aiding just the big dairies and factory farms. Encourage more people to start raising their own food, to keep a summer pig, a few hens for eggs, a flock of meat chickens, a cow, etc. Yes, the big boys represent 85% of the economic clout in agriculture but they are a tiny minority of people and they should not get extra votes just because they have more dollars. We are a democracy. Small livestock owners represent an order of magnitude more people than the big boys. It is our need that Steve Kerr should heed.
Lastly, and possibly most importantly, Steve, if you want to know how many pigs I have, just ask politely. I’ll probably tell you. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?
Sincerely,
Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mtn Farm
Just to be sure my comments didn’t get lost I also sent a copy to Secretary Steve Kerr, Steve Kerr, our Senate and House Ag Committee represenatives, federal reps and the local newspaper. Make sure your voice is heard and not dismissed.