Ruminations

The National Animal Identification System, NAIS, has been scrapped, at least for the moment.  The unwieldy, costly (to small farmers)  programs never got up and running and fears of USDA having an electronic chip in every chicken can be laid to rest for the moment.  On the other hand, our source verification of each carcass in our Hardwick Beef program is one of the keys to assuring the consumer that they know where it came from.  In an informal survey of Ag grad students grappling with food and all of today’s options;  they said the most important label claim for them is “they want to know where it came from.” Therefore Hardwick Beef’s system allows them to identify and then to call or visit the individual farm and be comfortable with how the animal was raised in a safe, humane way.

Read the article in the New York Times: U.S.D.A. Plans to Drop Program to Trace Livestock

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The USDA website describes the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) this way: “To protect the health of U.S. livestock and poultry and the economic well-being of those industries, we must be able to quickly and effectively trace an animal disease to its source.”

A March 11 op-ed in the New York Times by Shannon Hayes, a farmer and author of The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook and the forthcoming Radical Homemakers, argues that the proposed NAIS may sound like a good idea to identify affected animals when there is an outbreak like mad cow disease or avian flu.  But the effect of the system would be disastrous for rural farmers: “The burden for a program that would safeguard agribusiness interests would be disproportionately shouldered by small farmers, rural families and consumers of locally produced food.”

Read this articulate editorial here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/opinion/11hayes.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

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Finally, some good news on the NAIS front, and a significant victory for those farmers advocating the freedom to farm. The USDA has canceled the mandatory premises registration directive. However, states like Michigan and Wisconsin still need to rescind their mandatory NAIS regulations in order to be in agreement with federal requirements.

NAIS was promised to be a completely voluntary animal identification system but it was changed into a mandatory NAIS for producers who engage in interstate commerce and who participate in any one of the dozen or more federally regulated disease programs. Needless to say, this alarmed farmers across the country.

NoNAIS.org has led the effort to overturn this ruling, and you can read more here: http://nonais.org/2008/12/31/r-calf-nais-usda-cancels-mandatory-premises-registration-directive/

Filed by admin at 5:08 am under National Animal ID System, Nutrition, Diet & Food Politics
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