Even in a 1-2 mile radius "kill-zone" we could loose years of our lives spent to build a quality flock. A friend of mine spent 35 years breeding her Marans to be "ideal" to her. Should she loose those 35 years of work because some commercial producer near her had X disease? I don't think so. Especially if her birds are not infected.
The whole idea of NAIS being there so you "know where your food came from," I find a little silly. Most of us know where those commercial meats come from, and we already know we don't like it. It is the reason some of us raise our own meat. There are "suppose" to be rules and regulations already so you "know" where your food came from and that it is at least edible. These rules and regulations fail the system already, what does a bigger program and more rules, money, and regulations, now applied to small poultry keepers, going to help? NAIS is giving exceptions to those places "we get our food from".
If NAIS is there to prevent disease and benefit everyone(!) then the rules should be just as strict to the commercial keepers as they would be for the hobby keepers. The commercial keepers should have to mark every bird and tell exactly what happened to that bird. Did that Broiler die of a disease or did it die of a heart attack? You can bet they aren't going to test all the downed Broilers in the commercial industry. Then we get to talk about the battery industry. *sigh* We have all seen and heard and know of how the birds fair in such conditions. With NAIS the battery farms should have to mark and track every single battery hen. Did that hen die from getting stuck in the wire, did it get killed by the other hens, is it SICK, was it an infection, a tumor, cancer. The commercial producers will not have to adhere to these rules.
It just seems that NAIS is targeting the "little guys".
I would hate to think that after putting so much work into my Java, that my flock would be confiscated and destroyed because the big buys didn't practice good animal husbandry. I mean there are so few Java left, only one or two big flocks/breeders, a couple of ironically placed "kill-zones" and they're gone. The Java would be exstinct, and those people who worked hard to preserve them, their efforts would have been a lesson in futility and Murphy's law.
I just think that with NAIS, everyone should have to play by the same rules.
-Kim