NoNAIS.org

Promoted from comments of esbee:

Here is the news release for #20…which sounds like great news but alas I am jaded from years of political so-called “promise keeping”. It could be the USDA will give the authority to implement NAIS to an agency that has the authority. But at least it is good news in the victory that the USDA has backed down!!

R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America “Fighting for the U.S. Cattle Producer”

Group Wins Major Animal ID Dispute; USDA Cancels Mandatory Premises Registration Directive

Billings, Mont. – Just over a month after R-CALF USA sent a formal letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service-Veterinary Services (APHIS-VS) demanding that the agency retract Memorandum No. 575.19 issued on Sept. 22, 2008, APHIS-VS officially canceled that particular memo on Dec. 22, 2008.

Memorandum 575.19 mandated premises registration under the NAIS for producers engaged in interstate commerce and who participate in any one of the dozen or more federally regulated disease programs.

R-CALF USA told the agency in its Nov. 10, 2008, letter that the memo “constitutes an unlawful, final regulatory action initiated and implemented without public notice or opportunity for comment, as required by the Administrative Procedure Act,” and must be retracted.

“We caught USDA in the unlawful act of trying to convert what was promised to be a completely voluntary animal identification system into a mandatory NAIS, and the agency backed down,” said R-CALF USA President/Region VI Director Max Thornsberry, a Missouri veterinarian who also chairs the group’s animal health committee. “This goes to show how an organized group of cattle producers can effectively defend their rights if they stand and fight together.”

The cancellation memorandum issued by APHIS-VS on Dec. 22, 2008, states, “VS Memorandum No. 575.19 dated September 22, 2008, is hereby canceled.”

“This action by USDA confirms what we’ve been saying all along – that USDA does not have the authority to implement NAIS and it is using underhanded and unlawful methods to coerce independent cattle producers into giving up their rights to their property,” said Kenny Fox, who chairs the group’s animal identification committee.

“R-CALF USA encourages producers to not register their premises under the NAIS and to immediately request that their names and property be removed from the NAIS database if they had previously registered under USDA’s coercive actions,” Fox urged.

The new APHIS-VS memo further states that APHIS-VS “has an established procedure for producers who request their premises record be removed from the NAIS premises databases.”

R-CALF USA advocates that USDA should use and improve existing disease traceback methods including state-sanctioned brand programs that do not require individual producers to register their property under a national premises registration program in order to improve USDA’s disease traceback capabilities.

“There is no need to violate producers’ private property rights to accomplish this objective, and R-CALF will continue to work with Congress and USDA to improve our existing systems, but we will not tolerate the type of government intrusion on our industry that USDA envisioned with NAIS,” Fox concluded.

One of the justifications that Big Ag and the government use for forcing the proposed National Animal Identification System on us is that they claim we’ll get higher payments, premiums as they call them, for our livestock when we take them to market. This same scam was pushed on Australian cattle farmers under the name of the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) using the same justifications.

In Euros the dressed weight prices were as follows - UK 3.56, Italy 3.46, Netherlands 3.35, Germany 3.30, France 3.19, Uruguay 2.51, US 2.46, Brazil 1.83, Australia 1.57 and the politically price capped Argentina on 1.32.
-Australian Livestock Prices

The reality is the NLIS has turned into a nightmare for Australian farmers and there are 11 million phantom cattle in their system that they can’t find. On top of that the price of Australian beef is plummeting and the percent paid to farmers is dropping even faster. Australian farmers now get paid one of the lowest prices in the world for their beef. The system routinely messes up and it is the farmer who ends up taking the hit.

Hat tip to Darol.

In Ireland industrial oil contaminated the pig feed at a major commercial feed supplier resulting in 200 times the acceptable levels if dioxins in the pork. As a result 100,000 pigs face depopulation as the government likes to euphamistically puts their killing sprees.

The result is a total worldwide recall of Irish pork products which will hurt farmers, workers, retailers and consumers. It also leaves in question the safety of beef, poultry and lamb that may have been fed tainted food from that same supplier. This disaster points to the problems with centralization, consolidation of Big Ag both in the single source of feed and the small number of large pork producers.

Police are investigating how pork from 10 Irish farms became contaminated with dioxins, forcing Dublin to recall all pork products from pigs slaughtered in the Republic of Ireland. The farms were found to have used pig feed sold to them by a company called Millstream Power Recycling in County Carlow in the south of the country, Agriculture Department spokeswoman Martina Carney told CNN Monday.

The company, which recycles other foodstuffs to make animal feed, declined to speak to CNN.

Food safety officials traced the problem to “one small animal-food maker” that supplied oil-tainted feed to 10 pig farms in the Republic of Ireland and nine in Northern Ireland, according to The Associated Press.

Ireland’s chief veterinary adviser, Paddy Rogan, said only a handful of pigs at the 10 restricted farms have been slaughtered so far, but all of them — estimated at 100,000 or about one in 30 pigs in Ireland — would eventually be destroyed so that they cannot enter the food chain, AP reported.
:
The agency reported that an animal feed ingredient supplied by one business to 40-plus farms is regarded as the likely cause of the dioxin by experts, and that tests revealed the dioxin polychlorinated biphenyls to be 80 to 200 times above the acceptable safety level.
-CNN

For the last thirty years our government has been promoting bigger is better and more efficient. But as the USA and other countries are now learning, with bigger comes bigger recalls and food disasters. Not only are the big farms an ecological, social and economic nightmare but they are actually producing unsafe, less nutritious food and leading to food insecurity worldwide.

The solution is a larger number of smaller independent farms and support systems. This would provide greater food safety and security. One million small farms in the United States can feed our 300 million people with far more securely and safely than the approximately 200,000 big farms we currently have producing most of the food for our country. When recalls happened the lots and effects would automatically be smaller and self-limiting. It is far harder to disrupt a dispersed system. The Internet, designed originally to serve our country’s military in time of nuclear war, is a beautiful example of how robustly a distributed system works. It is time the USDA, and our new President (elect) Obama bring change to Agriculture in America, change that will lead to more small farms and fewer Big Ag nightmares.