Hello NAIS fighters,
Please spread the news of this protest far and wide.  Email it to your entire contact list, call on your neighbors and let them know that there are people standing up for their right to farm as they wish without big brother constantly looking over their shoulder, and by all means contact your local newspaper editor and give them a copy of this press release.  If you have time, make the trip down to Jefferson City, MO and meet some of these fine people.  Illinois Independent Consumers and Farmers Association is sending six representatives down there to take part in this peaceful protest.  We could arrange some sort of group transportation if there are any of you who want to travel to Jefferson City, MO but are limited financially.

Feel free to contact me by phone about any of this.

Thanks,

C.J. Cordell II

WICFA – President

(715) 418-0424

cj@wicfa.org

www.wicfa.org

Press Release

Contact;  Paul Hamby  816 632 0602

For immediate release

June 5, 2009 Jefferson City, Missouri………….

Farmers, Ranchers and Consumers will hold a protest of the NAIS – National Animal ID System on Tuesday June 9 from 8 am to 12 noon. The protest will run concurrently with the USDA NAIS listening session at Truman Hotel & Conference Center in Jefferson City, Missouri.   More than a dozen organizations have signed on in support of the peaceful protest and will have members attending to speak out against NAIS.  The USDA has been pushing for mandatory NAIS, originally calling for mandatory in January of 2008 and with enforcements in January of 2009, but has delayed implementation due to huge public outcry against the program.   USDA is now asking for public input on how to overcome objections to the program.    Bob Parker, a southern Missouri farmer, has toured the state speaking out against NAIS,   “The USDA does not want to accept that the people are against this program.  They are asking how to make it more palatable. Our message to USDA is to end NAIS now.”

NAIS is a three phase program designed by the USDA and the Nat’l Institute for Animal Agriculture to advance guidelines for international trade through an agency of the World Trade Organization called the OIE.  NAIS will tag and track movements of 33 species of animals worldwide.  Phase 1 requires livestock owners to obtain a GPS linked Premise ID number for their property.  Phase 2 requires all animals be identified with an international ID device.  Phase 3 requires electronic reporting of movements on or off a premises to effectuate 48 hour trace-back to the premises of origin of any and every animal. Each phase is predicated upon the preceding phase.  There can be no NAIS animal ID without a NAIS premises ID.

Opposition to NAIS is strongest from independent cattlemen, small farmers and hobbyists.

Doreen Hannes  is a researcher, author and public speaker whose family has a small farm and raises much of their own food.  She states, “The design of NAIS is effectively a license to farm. This program would cost us at least $4,000 the first year. There is no method for growers to recoup the cost of the program, and the implementation of NAIS will be the destruction of the family farm and rural America. The cost to freedom is simply immeasurable.”

“The Missouri Libertarian Party has worked with farmers and ranchers in Missouri for years to prevent implementation of the burdensome regulations of the National Animal Identification System being forced on them by the USDA”, Glenn Nielsen, Missouri Libertarian Party Chair.

Paul Hamby, NW Missouri coordinator for Campaign for Liberty, states  “NAIS will put an undue burden on non-electric Amish farmers,  small hobby farmers, 4-H and FFA members while providing no benefit to them.  NAIS will not make our food supply safer.  I am against this international livestock ID program run by the same federal government who just bought General Motors. ”

The following organizations are sending members to Jefferson City to speak against NAIS on June 9.
R-CALF USA,  Missouri Campaign for Liberty,  Arkansas Animal Producers Association,
International Dairy Goat Registry,  Missouri Independent Consumers and Farmers Organization,
Illinois Independent Consumers and Farmers Organization,  Ozarks Property Rights Congress,
Missouri First, Inc.,  Liberty Restoration Project,  Legislators Against Real ID,  Missouri Libertarian Party,
Missouri Constitution Party, Missouri Rural Crises Center,  Citizens for Private Property, Douglas County Citizens for Liberty.

For interviews or talk radio guests call,

Doreen Hannes 417 349 9625/417 962 0030

Bob Parker 417 257 8711

Ray Cunio 314 223 6925

Paul Hamby 816 632 0602

Updates and links to organizations listed above www.missouriansagainstnais.com

Why wouldn’t Secretary Vilsack want to visit the first state in which compliance with the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) was made mandatory? After all, if it’s such a good idea, wouldn’t you think the USDA would want to show it off? Tom Vilsack gave Wisconsin a wide berth on his “listening” tour because he knows just how ill-received the program has been here, which proves that while he may or may not be “listening,” he sure has heard the ruckus small-scale producers in Wisconsin have been making over the program.

Family farmers across the nation are fighting mad over the NAIS, which most of us realize is nothing more than a veiled attempt at controlling our food sovereignty and our independence. And while farm advocacy groups and grassroots movements have done a pretty good job at putting up road blocks, the USDA just keeps coming. So, instead of always being on the defense, perhaps its time for family farmers, small-scale producers, and homesteading enthusiasts to go on the offense, to bring the fight to the USDA. (more…)

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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