The government is up to it’s old trick of assigning Premises ID numbers without the knowledge, consent or signature of the farmers involved in Wisconsin:
A number of the local Amish producers were given a premise ID number without their knowledge. Bentley Lein is a management consultant with the creamery that buys the milk from many of the Amish producers and helped moderate the meeting. Lein said the creamery gave the state the information on many of the producers to get the ID numbers because the creamery was trying to help implement the law in a way that was religiously sensitive. Lein said the creamery board consulted with the elders of the community and a decision was made to give the producers a number without heir knowledge thinking that would avoid the conflict because producers would be unaware of the number.
-Vernon Broadcaster
Wisconsin is just the latest state to pull this stunt and I’ll bet they’ll be backing down from this unconstitutional action. Idaho, Massachusetts and several other states got in trouble for doing precisely this last year and then recanted after having signed up tens of thousands of farmers without their permission thus inflating the USDA’s claimed compliance numbers. The courts may be the next venue to throw out this infringement of our basic rights.
Note that you can go and leave comments about how you feel about this issue on the above article at the Vernon Broadcaster.
This is what I submitted, has not shown up yet.
I am with the Amish 100%. The USDA has stopped presale sale barn testing results or even collecting sale data in Oklahoma. That is so stupid if disease prevention is really the goal but lets see if “disease prevention” is the USDA goal or if the real goal is for corporate ag to get total monopoly of the food supply with cheap imports to kill off independents and self use growers. First when sale barn blood tests are done prior to the sale with immediate results any suspect animal can be tracked immediate BEFORE THE SALE never even entering food supply and the existing system of bangs and TB tests traceback works so keep it in place. The tests done now at sale barns are sent to central labs and might have a result in 30 days but usually 30-120 which means that animals suspect or positive are in the food chain most likely. Then there is BSE which the USDA refused to let Creekstone Farms and others test their own animals at their own expense so small independents had to sue to test their own animals and USDA lost and has til June to appeal. Now why would USDA refuse to let Independents tests their own animals and why has USDA cut back on BSE tests. Wasn’t it Canada’s BSE problem imported into the United States that caused the shut down of exports and isn’t it the USDA acting as treaty enforcers trying to force over thirty month age Canadian Cattle down our throats knowing they still have feed and BSE problems. Isn’t it USDA that acts as the Multi National Corporations Best Friend by promoting NAIS which would give factory farms lot numbers and individuals and independents will have to tag and report on each animal? Who will control the removal of tags? Packers who will have the means to develop a major data base since the four biggies control around 85% of the market now. Without a premise id they can’t build that data base and with a premise id they can. That is why USDA and Corporate Ag want premise id so bad and to destroy what works like brands, Bangs testing and tags and TB testing and brands. My best friend is a vet and funny it takes a couple of hours to get the whole history of an animal with the bangs tag….
BSE or mad cow does not show up for years so we trace back or test which is really more scientific and food safety first?
Hoof and Mouth takes two weeks to incubate? So traceback or test at sales with proven traceback methods and if every import was labeled for Country of Origin and United States Label only used for born, raised and butchered in USA then a clear choice would be there for consumers. Right now consumers are paying USA prices for imports labeled USA…even commercials say USDA supplied instead of USA meat. Who does USDA work for the USA citizen or Corporate Ag.? Well USDA, INC which has a private corporation for profit with Board of Directors of Corporate Ag seems to only represent Corporate Ag with tax payers monies and Land Grant Universities as their labs for profit paid for again by Federal, State funds according to their site but it is for profit. So the premise id is being forced on us not for animal health since TB is mostly a Mexican Import disease and USDA plans to replace bangs and TB programs with NAIS the after the fact program but corporate profits and to wipe out competition of independent and self use raisers. We have had more sick from the Mexican classic and hemorrhagic dengue fever in humans.
link for the full article.Quote
The Canadian Embassy in Mexico City issued an alert about dengue after five Canadians were sickened in Puerto Vallarta this year. Acapulco, a city of 700,000, has documented 549 cases of classic and hemorrhagic dengue in the first two months of 2007, up from 86 in the same period last year. By Mark Stevenson
The Associated Press End Quote.
Now let’s think about the cost of NAIS. There are more animals than people so how many offices are there for Social Security or Welfare to keep up with the tracking and daily operations of that program and what are those costs of operations and remember people do not have to report every movement within 24 hours. No one has a clue about the true cost of NAIS but we do know what the costs have been elsewhere and what a mess.
Where did NAIS come from in the first place? Global Corporate Ag and International Treaties.
Follow the money and those who stand to make the money and you will unravel the truth behind NAIS.
This mandate is just wrong and states making a mandate law after the fact is even more wrong. The cost of NAIS is too high both in food safety and monies to replace a system that works and we know the costs of the proven system. The cost in our Constitutional Rights is way too high.
Comment Sue Karber — April 23, 2007 @ 7:54 am
I couldn’t believe the attitude of some of the early messages. The only thing the Amish have ever asked for was to be left alone. Apparently, that’s too much to ask for from some people and our government. What gives these people the idea that all this surveillance is a good thing? They must be terrified of losing control.
Comment Barbara — April 23, 2007 @ 9:22 am
I stepped out on a limb and wrote this (although I used a number instead of a name to identify myself. . .):
Like the branding of the Jews in WWII Germany, the enumeration of People and their Chattle is the sign of a Fascist, Totalitarian Government.
What is hoped to be gained by controlling diseases which are already being controlled by other, less intrusive means? What is to be gained by protecting us from “terrorism” if our own government become the terrorists?
The state goons in charge of implementing NAIS are criminals violating laws while trying to bolster numbers. The Amish should withdraw from the dairy who signed them up against their will. It’s criminal. What idiot thought that would work?
If you have a moral and ethical objection to something then you are in the right. Period. If you cannot stand for your values–whatever they are–and have a firm conviction than you are just another one of the faceless, soulless sheeple. American is full of that animal–they are the ones who need to be tagged and tracked as a threat to freedom and the Constitution.
Let the disease infested industrial food complex–e. coli 0157 beef, salmonella peanut butter, tapeworm Mexican pork–find their own way out of the mess they’ve created by charging more to serve us less and less quality which is greatly compromised. We don’t need they’re form of food security or tracking. A local food system where buyers know producers and the food is never more than a few days or hours old and does not travel 2000 miles, but less than 500, is the only thing to provide bio, food security and disease outbreak prevention.
With every farm enumerated, and all livestock tallied, at the first hint of chicken sniffles or a coughing cow everyone who has will-lessly participated in NAIS will wake up to the “depopulation” of their animals, “for the good of the nation”, without testing or confimation of anything wrong. There goes our local economies, our national food system and Hello, cheap, imported foods. . . .until there is an embargo on the US.
Wake up America, it’s already too late but things can still be done. This isn’t about the Amish getting away with anything (else) or religious freedom of a certain sect. This is about our personal freedom to choose and our National freedom to live as Americans. Fight NAIS everywhere before it gets worse.
Comment Podchef — April 23, 2007 @ 11:28 am
I am confused by this article and especially who the elders are. The article states:
“creamery board consulted with the elders of the community”. Are the elders the Amish elders? That doesn’t make sense to me that the elders, if they are Amish, would go along with this. Sounds fishy. I wonder how much they gave Lein for each premise registered. Dirty trick. And Wisconsin is now starting to register animals. Is someone going to come in the night and tag the Amish livestock? Do they think that would be religiously sensitive?
Comment Mary Beth Westcott — April 23, 2007 @ 1:51 pm
AMENDMENT 1 of the Bill of Rights - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
Regardless of whether you admire the Amish (which I do) or think they need to grow mustaches to go along with their beards, their right to be who they are is a very basic right. I am very interested to see how the liars that signed them up try to get out of this one…something smells in Wisconsin and it ain’t cheese!
Maybe Warren Zevon was right -
“send lawyers, guns and money, the shit has hit the fan!”
Comment Bob Constantine — April 23, 2007 @ 9:15 pm
I’ll bet their response to that would be that Congress didn’t pass that law. However, I don’t see how they can sidestep the issue that they are allowing a state to do that.
Comment Barbara — April 24, 2007 @ 9:44 am
How many of us are signed up without our knowledge? This statement in the article should alarm all of us….”Does the fact that many of you were unaware you even had the number give you a clean conscious religiously on this?” asked Kapanke.
How much data has been mined from registries, mailing lists, surveys, sign ins to USDA program/events, fairs we do not know about?
Comment Sue Karber — April 27, 2007 @ 5:43 pm
“Does the fact that many of you were unaware you even had the number give you a clean conscious religiously on this?” asked Kapanke.
Most victimized people have clean consciences. It’s the perpetrators who shouldn’t. Kapanke just proved that he has no conscience.
Comment Barbara — April 27, 2007 @ 8:19 pm