From Doreen:
Rep. Rose Delauro, chairwoman of the House Ag Appropriations Sub-Committee, has inserted pro-NAIS provisions into the Ag Appropriations bill for 2009. The proposed bill would require the USDA’s National School Lunch Program to only buy meat from animals registered in the National Animal Identification System (NAIS).
The full House Appropriations Committee will vote on the bill this Thursday, June 26. After that, it will go to the full House. So Action is Needed NOW. We need everyone to call Rep. Emerson (Missouri Representative on the House Ag Appropriations Sub-Committee), Rep. DeLauro (chairwoman of the House Ag Appropriations Sub-Committee), & Rep. Obey (Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations). See NAIS Talking Points below.
Call Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (202.225.4404): Ask Rep. Emerson to offer an amendment to strip pro-NAIS language from the House Ag Appropriations Bill. Tell Rep. Emerson that Missouri livestock producers are adamantly opposed to NAIS.
Call Rep. Rosa DeLauro (202-225-3661): Tell Rep. DeLauro to take pro-NAIS language out of House Ag Appropriations Bill.
Call Rep. Dave Obey (202.225.3365): Ask Rep. Obey to strip the pro-NAIS language from the House Ag Appropriations Bill.
NAIS Talking Points:
1. NAIS does NOTHING to address food safety issues from the processor to the consumer.it simply moves the burden from corporate meat packers, who don’t follow the rules, to independent livestock producers.
2. Missouri’s Family Farmers believe it is extremely important to ensure consumer confidence in the safety and health of the U.S. food supply while at the same time ensuring the economic viability of independent livestock producers.But NAIS does not meet the needs of producers or consumers.
3. The majority (>92%) of family farmers in Missouri (and the rest of the nation) are opposed to NAIS.
4. The Truth About Animal ID.: Creates an undue economic burden on producers, does not include identification of imported meats, does nothing to increase consumer choice or confidence, expands packers ability to unfairly discriminate against family farmers.
I would also encourage you to contact your own Rep. regardless of weather they are on the Ag committee. My Rep is on the Education committee so I think it is worth while to contact him as well as these other Reps since this will end up on the house floor.
Comment Lorene — June 23, 2008 @ 4:12 pm
Call them folks! They need to be reminded they work for US not themselves,not monsanto/usda,not the govt but US as in we the people!
This whole thing is so much BS,I wonder how much $ Cargill or the like gave her to introduce their proposal?
This type of arrogant move is simply a powerplay to grab control of the already captive/hostage market that exists in our so called public school system!
It will serve to close out the small farmers product thereby lowering the price he can obtain and will give the market over completely to the conglomerates who came up with this NAIS nonsense in the first place!
And besides USDA does NOT inspect the meat anyway and I wouldn’t be suprised if you checked you would find the meat served to the little kiddies in the institutions is from brazil/argentina/or commie china anyhow,filled with God knows what,BUT for heavens sake dont let non-nais registered terrorist farmers sell anything healthy to the system!!
I am pleased to see VT moving towards getting control over the butchering of on farm meats,VT should tell USDA to go to h#ll and impliment its own instate rules,read the 9th & 10th ammendments,I cant find any where that says the fed can dictate food policy to a state,so that means the fed doesnt have the say,spit in their eye VT!!
“Live free or die tryin”
Comment LEE — June 23, 2008 @ 5:16 pm
from the western livestock journal(june 23),NAIS HITS SNAG; we can thank mary for that,but now is not the time to drop our guard,as we can see from the above post.i would ask each of you out there to join and promote that large cattle group phantom keeps talking about,or take and put this little ad in you local news paper,it reads TIRED OF THE USDA? the farm-to-consumer leagal fund is suing the USDA to stop the NAIS.join,donate and learn more at www.farmtoconsumer.org or call (703)208-3276.we cant pull any punches now,we have to many groups and people taking a stand and we must help them.your friend,nick
Comment nick — June 23, 2008 @ 10:05 pm
Has this been voted on yet? I went to the Committee calendar but didn’t see any mention of the ‘Ag Appropriations Sub-Committee’.
It’s really hard to keep up with these people. They emerge from one hole and disappear down another.
Comment donna — June 24, 2008 @ 2:57 pm
Heads up, folks! Downsize DC has an anti-NAIS campaign going. Click here to send another letter to Congress though Downsize DC and add some force to their push.
From Downsize DC:
“National Animal Identification System
We also have other work to do. We’ve been campaigning for a long time against something called NAIS, the National Animal Identification System. NAIS is a bureaucratic nightmare designed to tag every farm animal in America, and track them in yet another vast centralized government database.
The alleged purpose of NAIS is too improve food safety, but the rules are written to favor large corporate farms, while strangling small farms in a web of expensive compliance costs. NAIS could put many farmers out of business and concentrate agriculture in fewer and fewer hands.
This could make our food supply less safe, rather than more secure. Centralized food production will be more vulnerable to the spread of disease. We need diversity, not concentration.
NAIS is also unnecessary. Despite highly publicized problems our food supply has actually been getting more safe, without additional regulation. The economist Alex Tabarrok provides the evidence here.
In addition, some of the most publicized food problems, as with the sick cow forced into the food chain by the Hallmark/Westland company, owe more to the failure of government regulators to do their job using powers and resources they already have. In fact, those cows were tagged under current regulation. Obviously, that didn’t prevent sick cows from being processed into meat for schoolchildren, and NAIS won’t do so either.
NAIS is just another government power grab. And, as usual, Congress and the bureaucracy are trying every trick in the book to ram this system down the throat of America’s farmers. The tactics they’re using could, ironically, be called ‘picking off the herd.’ If they can’t pass NAIS, they’ll phase elements of it in, piecemeal.
The first piece of the meal is a provision inserted into a pending agriculture appropriations bill. This provision would prohibit the USDA from buying food for the federal school lunch program from farms that aren’t NAIS compliant. And lest you think we’re exaggerating about the intent, here’s how House Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro presented this proposal to her Congressional colleagues . . .
‘We will also strengthen Animal ID and the National School Lunch Program including language to provide market-based incentives to strengthen both the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) and the National School Lunch Program. This proposal would increase participation in the animal ID program… Because AMS (Agricultural Marketing Service) is a major purchaser of meat products through the School Lunch Program, this proposal would generate significant market-based incentives to strengthen the department’s voluntary animal ID system and support livestock producers and other premises that signup for USDA’s system . . . The public has already made a massive investment in USDA’s NAIS system – $128 million since fiscal year 2004. Why not use the system that the public has paid for to support producers who voluntarily enroll in NAIS and to strengthen the animal traceability capability to provide better assurances for the National Scho ol Lunch Program?’
The bill provides a total NAIS funding level of $14.5 million. That’s $4.8 million above 2008 levels. But it will only succeed in driving up the cost of the school lunch program, centralizing the sources of food for this program, and harming smaller, local farms.
DownsizsDC.org has signed a coalition letter asking Congress to remove this provision from the appropriations bill. You can help by sending a similar message to Congress. Our standard message for this campaign asks Congress to end the NAIS program. PLEASE USE YOUR PERSONAL COMMENTS to request that the school lunch NAIS provision also be removed from the current agriculture appropriations bill, which does not yet have a bill number assigned, but is in now moved to mark-up by the full Agriculture Committee.”
Comment Pat H — June 25, 2008 @ 2:58 pm
Sec. Schafer - Not about Food Safety
Transcript of Remarks by Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and Question and Answer Session with NCBA members
Washington, D.C. - April 2, 2008
QUESTION: I thank you first for coming. I appreciate it very much. There’s a little bit of follow-up on this beef recall. I appreciate that we’re using science-based for mad cow disease. I’m just asking you, make sure that this was science-based. I’m a little worried that we let animal welfare get mixed up with food safety. And I think I’ve even read in the press that you or your people have said maybe this was a little bit drastic. It’s two years, so how do they use science to determine that it should go back two years?
And is there anything at this late date you can modify because, assuming we have a chance to do something with Japan and Korea, I’m worried when they’re making that decision—and day before yesterday in USA Today the big word “the world’s largest meat recall” is going to come home to haunt us.
So the first act was really bad last fall. I’m a little worried the treatment of it was a little too aggressive, and can we at this late date do anything to pull it back to help us get something done with Korea?
SEC. SCHAFER: Yeah, and I appreciate your question because it was a tough decision. I mean this wasn’t a food safety issue. This was a rule violation issue. The reason that we went back to the two years is because we were able to go back through our records, and as you know that once an animal has been approved by a veterinarian in the stockyard it is tagged, and we can follow it through the whole process. And what we found out in searching our records is that we had a chance to go back, and we saw violations take place. And we said, ‘This is the time period that we have to consider.’
But my point, when I made that decision, is this. Our trading partners across this world need to understand that we take food safety seriously in this country. And we’re going to follow the rules and the regulations. They’re there, they’re important, and we’re going to make sure we send a message to the industry that we’re serious about this. I’m very comfortable when we sit down with our counterparts in Korea and Japan to talk about shipping beef and opening up those markets that I can assure them that everything that we do is going to be done proper and well, and the beef that they get is going to be safe and good.
And that signal is that we follow the rules here that are set up and that are important. So I don’t see any reason to change the actions of USDA, what we’ve done. I think the message with our trading partners is clear. Unfortunately we have a backdrop in the public perception in the United States that somehow sick cows got into the facility. That didn’t happen. But you know, that’s what that video showed. So we’re taking the proper actions. We’re going to, when they get done with the investigation, continue to take proper actions. And I think the ultimate message is good out there in the international arena.
Link
Comment Ann Nelson — June 26, 2008 @ 9:44 am
That man can’t find his way out of a paper bag! He’s a ‘downer’. Get him out of our food chain quick!
My only hope is that the incompetence of these ’selected’ idiots will ball up the entire system so badly they won’t be able to complete the task their puppet masters set them forth to do.
Comment donna — June 26, 2008 @ 2:28 pm
Yall may want to read the good letter that farmtoconsumer.org sent to Rep. DeLauro on June 26th…hit on their website and look at the right sidebar for access to it.They have 61 organizations signed on with it. Then, look at r-calfusa.com at Animal ID for their letter to DeLauro dated June 23rd; excellent also. Both of these organizations have “exhibits” with their letters, to reinforce their positions.
Comment The Phantom — June 26, 2008 @ 10:08 pm