USDA - number of fowl recorded with name and address of buyer

[RedHawk027]

Greetings all!
Last Saturday I inquired at a local feed store in Petersburg, VA regarding the possible purchase of chickens this Spring.
During the conversation I was informed by the owner that the USDA was requiring them to record the name and address of the buyer in addition to the number of birds being purchased.
Do any of you know the back story to this particular incursion by the USDA?
Many thanks.

 

[redsoxs]

I sure don't know but it sounds like they might be trying to track bird flu??

 

[speckledhen]

Greetings all!
Last Saturday I inquired at a local feed store in Petersburg, VA regarding the possible purchase of chickens this Spring.
During the conversation I was informed by the owner that the USDA was requiring them to record the name and address of the buyer in addition to the number of birds being purchased.
Do any of you know the back story to this particular incursion by the USDA?
Many thanks.

They've been doing this for years now all over the U.S. I would never give them my name/address and always pay cash at feed stores. This is a government plan to know where every chicken is, even 2 hens in a backyard. Ostensibly, it is for your "protection", but in reality, it is for the protection of commercial flocks and big agri-biz. To put it simply, they want to know where to come to kill your birds if there is a deadly reportable disease near/in a commercial flock. That's the long and short of it. They have no intention of protecting your flock.

Look up NAIS, National Animal Identification System. They've been trying to get it in place for years and keep re-packaging it to make it swallow easier. Already, North Carolina has a rule that you must register your flock with the state, so I refuse to sell to people in NC (I live right at the border). The USDA has zero business knowing how many/what type of poultry I own.

 

[RedHawk027]

This is new to me. I have been buying birds for many, many years. The owner said that this was instituted recently, and that he cannot sell them unless they take the information from the buyer.
Thus cash, check, or charge would not make a difference.

 

[speckledhen]

This is new to me. I have been buying birds for many, many years. The owner said that this was instituted recently, and that he cannot sell them unless they take the information from the buyer.
Thus cash, check, or charge would not make a difference.

It is not new. Two years ago, the main feeds store in town, closed now, said she had to take names/addresses if she sold chicks. She'd never done it before. Same at the local co-op. So, your guy may just be getting the information, but this practice has been ramping up over the past few years. Tractor Supply has been doing it for years as well.

Me, I would refuse to buy chicks if they wanted to know where they were going. I've been known to write a fake name/address down, I think it was 3 years ago the last time I got any hatchery chicks, mainly for a friend who was coming to visit from Kentucky and taking them back with her. I will NOT tell them what they want to know. Thankfully, I really haven't bought chicks from hatcheries in years so I don't have to deal with it, but I would walk out rather than be bullied into disclosing that information. They take my cash for chicks without my information or they lose a sale.


ETA: They do want to know where chickens have been taken to know who is in the "kill zone" of local commercial operations. I mean, how would they protect your flock? A dome over your house? They don't care about backyard flocks except in regard to being a possible threat to big agri-biz.

 

[RedHawk027]

Thanks. Perhaps they are tardy in receiving notification. I did not inquire too deeply in that regard as I was mainly cursing the Feds at the time.
Since these folks know me fairly well, I cannot buy from them anonymously.
I might try your cash or no sale approach at TS or SS.
I am not pleased with this situation, but may have to endure it for the time being until I can increase my flock's numbers and variety.
I may hatch out some more this year, but want something more than the white leghorns I have inherited for the last few years prior to retirement.
Many thanks for your comments.
Much appreciated.

 

[speckledhen]

Thanks. Perhaps they are tardy in receiving notification. I did not inquire too deeply in that regard as I was mainly cursing the Feds at the time.
Since these folks know me fairly well, I cannot buy from them anonymously.
I might try your cash or no sale approach at TS or SS.
I am not pleased with this situation, but may have to endure it for the time being until I can increase my flock's numbers and variety.
I may hatch out some more this year, but want something more than the white leghorns I have inherited for the last few years prior to retirement.
Many thanks for your comments.
Much appreciated.

I have hatched for years, mainly because of the substandard quality of the poor hens I originally had from Ideal poultry-lost about 15 to reproductive malfunctions. But, then the USDA started this NAIS stuff and cracked down on the feed stores to take information for them. basically spy for them, and I had another great reason to quit buying hatchery birds.

At the local co-op, they like to take the name for the handwritten ticket. About 10 years ago when we first started buying there, my husband would say "Cash" so one of the women would call him Mr. Cash, then she began calling him Johnny Cash, LOL. The manager knows my name because she was a customer for my crafts business, but we never allow our name to go on the tickets and always pay cash, never credit cards or checks. For a time, she quit even getting chicks because they demanded she take names of chick buyers, but she's doing it again, probably because the customers always want it. I've never bought chicks there, though, since I have much better stock anyway (she buys from Mt. Healthy and I've had examples of their birds, not happy with them at all).

 

[MrsChickens]

Agreed. Given the TN and elsewhere outbreaks in recent years and the wide distribution of day old chicks across the US, it would be impossible to contain an outbreak if the source could not be tracked which potentially could wipe out poultry in the US. I doubt very seriously the inclusion of a database of buyers of chicks would/could be used for any other purpose. My community isn't going to spend the time/resources to check a national database so that they can "visit" illegal flocks. I'm not worried.

 

[speckledhen]

I put this in the category of my choice in the way I feed my family. I know what my chickens eat and I know their health status. It is none of their business how many birds I have, how many I hatch/buy, etc. It is my right, just as it is my right to grow a tomato plant on my own soil so I can be assured what my family is ingesting. They can just go suck eggs as far as I'm concerned. If my birds become ill, I'll put them down myself. No government lackeys are coming onto my property and throwing my birds into a portable gas chamber to suffocate (which is how it is usually done, leaving the carcasses for you to dispose of). Mine are not part of anyone's food chain but my own. Yes, people occasionally buy hatching eggs and on more rare occasions, chicks, but I know the health of my flocks and I will never knowingly spread a disease/sell some infected bird to anyone.

Mine have no contact with commercial flocks, who are in big warehouse operations, but they are not secure buildings! I've seen the doors opened. Wild birds can fly into those buildings, drawn by the feed, just as much as they can fly over my property. And disease would spread like wildfire through that commercial monoculture of crowded birds. It has NOTHING to do with my flocks, nothing. But, my flock is a threat to their profit margin, so the USDA does not support backyard flocks, not like the government used to do during the depression era.

 

[MrsChickens]

Unfortunately we have a govt that tracks EVERYTHING and short of overthrow, it's the world we find ourselves living in. Where was all the protests about suveillance and tracking when this all started with Clinton, continued with Bush and put on steroids by Obama?