Mad Cow and Beef Exports

Re: [spiers] Mad Cow and Beef Exports

Google this, you will find it is illegal to test all cows in USA, and illegal to
test cows and
announce your meat is "mad cow free" since it is unfair competition.

One US meat company tried to do just that, test all meat to meet the demands of
their
Japanese customers, and they were prosecuted by the feds... as Nixon's Ag Sec
said 'get big
or get out" meaning the federal government intends, as a stated policy, to wreck
all small
farmers. it is working...

Here is a plea from a small farmer related to all this...

Topic of the Freedom21 Conference...
Storm against NAIS
By Walter Jeffries

March 1, 2006

Wednesday, February 22nd was Washington's real birthday. In honor
of General
George Washington, who became the first President of our brand new liberated
nation, I urge
you to contact your local radio stations, as well as national radio station
personalities, to let
them know the danger that the USDA's National Animal Identification System
(NAIS) poses to
our liberties. Let them know that you want them to address the issue of why is
the
government stealing away our rights with programs like NAIS, PAWS, REAL ID and
the Patriot
Act.

Are you familiar with NAIS? Let me give you a little background.
The USDA wants to
register the GPS coordinates, name, address, phone, and other data on every
farm, home, and
other location that has even has a single animal, with a government Premise ID.
For this
privilege of mandatory registration, you will pay a fee of $10 or more, per
year. Next, they
intend to tag every single one of your animals with a RFID, or other tag. This
will be
mandatory. In addition to paying an annual fee and paying for tags for all of
your animals,
you would also be required to log, track, and report all "events," such as the
birth of an
animal, death of an animal, animals leaving, or entering your property. All
reports must be
made within 24 hours, or you could face stiff fines. Do not expect them to keep
your private
information secure. In a little "Oops," the USDA just released the social
security numbers of
350,000 farmers.

Big producers, like factory farms, get to use a single batch ID for
tens of thousands
of animals,to keep their costs down. For them, NAIS is a minor bookkeeping entry
that gives
them big profits in the export markets to Japan and other countries. Small
farmers and
homesteaders, with their mixed-age flocks and herds, would be required to tag
and track
every single individual animal. NAIS is great for big corporate producers, and
hellish for small
farmers and homesteaders. The cost of NAIS in fees, tags, equipment costs, and
time will
bankrupt small farmers, and overwhelm people who raise their own food animals.
In the end,
the consumer will pay - NAIS could add almost a thousand dollars a year to the
annual food
budget for the typical family of four. By destroying small producers, NAIS will
kill the Slow
Food and the Buy Local movements, as local farmers are driven out of business.

NAIS is already mandatory in some states, starting this year,
including Texas and
Wisconsin. In other states, like Vermont, the agricultural commissioner and
state vet have
said they will tag and track every animal, right down to the back yard level.
This means
everyone, even Granny with her one laying hen, is going to have to get a $10 per
year
premise ID, a RFID tag for her chicken, and make government reports on its
movements.
Texas has implemented a $1,000 per incident per day, fine for non-compliance.
What small
farmer or homesteader can stand up to that kind of fire power?

NAIS also requires tagging and tracking of pets and guardian
animals, including
alpaca and horses. It may later likely be extended to cats and dogs, although
that has not yet
been announced. It is allowed for in the draft proposal, through extensions of
the program.
In New York state, they already have a bill in the legislature requiring that
all dogs be
internally tagged with RFID chips for tracking purposes.

USDA agents can come to your home, and kill all of your livestock,
without a warrant
or any legal appeal under NAIS. Once you are registered into the mandatory NAIS
system, you
effectively lose your rights to your own livestock. You become a serf for the
state, worse than
in Communist Russia. If you do not believe me, then please go to the USDA web
site, and
read the draft proposal for NAIS, which is already being implemented in stages,
without
public feedback or scrutiny. Check out the timeline - we all must start fighting
it now, before
it is too late. Together, we can stop this fascist move to take away our
property and
livelihoods. We can still protect our traditional rights to farm, if we act now.

Is NAIS legal? No, not under our Constitution - but that does not
stop the
government from implementing bad laws and regulations, and then enforcing them.
NAIS
specifically violates the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 14th Amendments and the Bill of
Rights. The USDA
has been very hush-hush about NAIS, because they know that if people really
understood
how far reaching it is, what an outrageous violation of our Constitutional
rights NAIS is, then
people would stop NAIS dead. The USDA has been asking for feedback, but only
from the
large "stakeholders" as they call them. Small farmers don't count. Homesteaders
don't matter.
Pet owners were completely ignored, because none of these groups profit from
NAIS.

How could this happen? NAIS was enabled under the Patriot Act.
Killing the Patriot
Act now, will not be enough. Individual states have already enacted NAzIS laws.
The
Republicans and Democrats are both in on creating the Patriot Act and NAIS, in
the wake of
the terrorism scare of 9/11. Using this theater of fear, large corporations
jumped at the
chance to implement NAIS.

Why would anyone want NAIS? In a word, "profits." Remember, always
follow the
money trail. Large meat exporters are required to provide trace-back
documentation for their
cattle for export to foreign markets, like Japan. Agreements with the European
Union are
asking for similar tagging and tracking. The big meat packers announced they did
not want
to deal with two streams of animals, those that were tagged and those that were
not, so they
expanded NAIS to cover all cattle. The RFID tag and equipment industry got
excited about
this tremendous market. In their greed, they wanted NAIS extended to all
livestock that might
enter the food chain. Then, it was extended to non-traditional food animals,
including horses
and guardian animals.

To justify this, they now claim that the purpose of NAIS is to
prevent disease. It is
not. They use Mad Cow (BSE) and Avian Flu (H5N1) scares to justify a program
that is about
profits. NAIS will not prevent, or stop disease. BSE is caused by cows eating
cows, and it
sometimes occurs randomly, when a protein misfolds, so traceback won't help with
BSE.
Testing at slaughter and stopping the practice of feeding cows back to cows are
the things
that will help prevent Mad Cow Disease. Avian Flu comes from wild ducks and
other wild
water fowl. NAIS will do nothing for either. Confinement rearing also will not
help with Avian
Flu - several factory chicken farms have been hit by it.

Now, there is even a push to extend chipping to pets and even
humans, both as an
implant for "medical records," and as part of the national REAL ID program, so
the
government can better track all people within the United States.

NAIS is about profits for large meat exporters. NAIS is not about
disease, and has
nothing to do with food safety for the American consumer. NAIS will hurt small
farmers,
homesteaders, and pet owners with excessive fees, invasions of privacy, threats
of enormous
fines, and onerous paperwork. It is a clear violation of our Constitutional
rights. NAIS will also
hurt consumers, even vegetarians, because animal manures are used to grow
vegetables
organically. NAIS will result in the consolidation of our food supply into the
hands of fewer
large corporations, thus making our national food chain more susceptible to
attacks by
terrorist organizations. The best way to prevent terrorist attacks is diversity,
and to spread
out the food supply. Buy Local! NAIS could even cause the national housing
bubble to
collapse, as small farmers go bankrupt and their prime developable lands get
chopped up
into subdivisions by developers. The damaging effects of NAIS could ripple
through our
fragile economy, driving us into another great depression, as people who supply
farmers are
put out of work, and they stop buying.

What is the solution? NAIS should be made strictly voluntary, and
the rights of
consumers, small farmers, livestock owners, homesteaders, and pet owners should
be
protected from future abuses. If NAIS is such a good idea, then the sellers who
would benefit
from the export markets and other venues requiring traceability will get higher
prices, so they
will voluntarily join the system. There is no need to force it down everyone's
throat, if it is
such a good idea. The very fact that the USDA is planning to make NAIS
mandatory, proves
what a bad idea it really is. Better the carrot, than the stick.

For more information about NAIS, check out the FAQ's at the top of
the left hand
sidebar, and the various additional resources in the right sidebar on the
NoNAIS.org web site.

Speak now, while you still have the right. Let your voice be heard
across the land.
Start today by contacting your local talk show radio hosts and stations.

"As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression.
In both instances,
there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And, it is in
such twilight
that we all must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become
unwitting
victims of the darkness."

Justice William O. Douglas,
U.S. Supreme Court (1939-75)


On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 04:22:42 -0000, "mgranich" wrote :

> Why doesn't the beef industry test every cow for mad cow disease, vs
> just the down cows or the cows that "look funny"? I don't eat much
> beef, but when I do, I would pay extra for "tested safe" beef. If you
> are a cattleman, why would you object to testing every cow? Cost? It
> must be costing a rancher big if he can't export beef, or his
> customers choose chicken or pork for safety reasons.
>
> I read today that the US is trying to have Japan and South Korea
> reopen thier markets for US Beef. Wouldn't testing every cow be
> reassuring to those countries and others interested in importing
> beef? In the mean time, Australia is cashing in with record beef
> exports to Japan.
>
> Anthony
>
>
>
>
>
> Compete on Design!
>
> www.johnspiers.com

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