The Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, has been holding “listening sessions” in rural communities throughout the country. He has visited with industry representatives in Missouri, Colorado, and Pennsylvania to name a few. But, curiously enough, the good Secretary didn’t come anywhere near Wisconsin. You would think he’d want to visit the first state to make compliance with the NAIS mandatory; wouldn’t you? It seems Secretary Vilsack is afraid to get in the ring in Wisconsin. Not surprising. I’m pretty sure that any “listening session” here would quickly turn into a cage match, with Vislsack and crew soundly outnumbered and defenseless against the public pummeling they’d receive.

Wisconsin’s family farmers and small-scale producers have not gone quietly into the abyss of bureaucracy; they drug us by the hair, kicking and screaming. Organizations like Family Farm Defenders and the Weston A. Price Foundation, have made tremendous efforts to keep the pressure on Madison while keeping family farmers across the nation informed.

So what did Tom Vilsack “hear” on his “listening” tour? Pretty much the same old kissing up from government-funded agencies, all of whom are more concerned with keeping their cushy offices jobs than helping farmers. Of course, corporate agriculture is well-represented at these “listening sessions.” Afterall, theses so-called listening sessions are really nothing more than a public relations tour where big industry and big government get to parade around as champions of the people.

One group representing citizen-based agriculture tried to get in the ring. R-CALF USA, a group that advocates for American cattle producers offered a comprehensive, yet simple plan for controlling the threat of livestock diseases. The basics of the plan call for common sense measure that would prove effective in both cost and outcome:

1. Adopt the surveillance and identification components of the preexisting brucellosis program, including the metal eartag and tattoo that identifies the state-of-origin and the local veterinarian who applied the identification devices, and require breeding stock not otherwise identified through breed registries to be identified at the first point of ownership transfer.
2. State and Tribal animal health officials should be solely responsible for maintaining a statewide database for all metal tags applied within their respective jurisdictions and should continue to use the mailing address and/or the production unit identifier determined appropriate by the attending veterinarian to achieve traceback to the herd of origin should a disease event occur. Under no circumstances should the Federal government maintain a national registry of U.S. livestock or require the national registration of producers’ real property.
3. The federal government should enter into agreements with State and Tribal animal health officials to pay for the States’ and Tribal governments’ costs of identifying breeding stock and maintaining the State and Tribal databases, as well as bolstering disease surveillance at livestock collection points such as livestock auction yards and slaughtering plants, including increased surveillance for BSE.
4. The federal government should coordinate with the States and Tribes to establish electronic interface standards and to establish improved communication protocols so it can more effectively coordinate with the States and Tribes in the event of a disease outbreak.
5. The federal government should coordinate with the States and Tribes to establish improved protocols for the retention and searchability of State and Tribal health certificates, brand inspection documents and other documents used to facilitate interstate movement of livestock.
6. Establish specific disease programs and focus increased resources toward the eradication of diseased wildlife in States where wildlife populations are known to harbor communicable diseases. R-CALF USA’s plan also includes measures to bolster the U.S.’s resistance to the introduction of foreign animal diseases and to improve food safety.
7. Prevent the importation of serious cattle diseases and pests from foreign sources by:
   1. Prohibiting the importation of livestock from any country that experiences outbreaks of serious diseases.
   2. Requiring all imported livestock to be permanently identified.
   3. Requiring all livestock imported into the United States to meet health and safety standards identical to those
      established for the United States.
   4. Requiring TB testing and quarantine of all imported Mexican cattle.
   5. Reversing USDA’s efforts to carve out regions within disease-affected foreign countries in order to facilitate imports from the affected country before the disease of concern is fully controlled or eradicated.
   6. Increasing the testing of all imported meat and bone meal to prohibit contaminated feed from entering the United States.
8. To address the challenge of increased incidences of tainted meat products, Congress and USDA must substantially reform the current hands-off inspection system known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP). HACCP has fundamentally failed to ensure adequate sanitary practices at major slaughterhouse establishments.Read the whole proposal here>>>

While the Secretary and industry hacks visit, and family farm advocates struggle to stay in the ring, there is another, inexpensive, time-tested solution that the USDA team is overlooking. I’ll discuss it in depth in the next post. For now, suffice it to say that there is a way to force the NAIS crowd into a cage match with no way out.

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Tags: NAIS, R-CALF USA, Tom Vilsack, USDA