The evils of NAIS

[speckledhen]

Thanks for that link. Doreen Hannes has been tirelessly fighting to get the general public to understand NAIS and to at least know it exists. Seems the best thing to do is read the NAIS proposal and compare what is being said about it to see if they jibe. It's a tedious read, certainly, but necessary.

 

[dichotomymom]

Wow, I leave for a couple days, and there are tons of replies! Yes, reading the proposal is the best idea. It's just that lay language isn't always incorporated and thus makes interpreting difficult.

 

[speckledhen]

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I agree with that 100%. That's why it's so tedious! I'm an excellent reader and when I peruse these proposals and bills, I have to read some sentences over and over to get it right.

 

[GardenerGal]

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Bingo! That's exactly what NAIS is about. It was started and pushed for by the Big Meat/Poultry companies -- Cargill and the like -- for their own purposes. Nothing more than fancy PR to convince foreign markets that our meat and poultry are safe for them to import... at the expense of the small backyard livestock and poultry owners.

I went to a meeting at our state's State House a couple years ago, where some anti-NAIS people had convinced a few local State Reps to come listen to the issue. It was astounding at how few of our State Representatives even had a clue about NAIS. Especially when every state is supposed to appoint a commission/committee of State Reps to review NAIS and decide whether it would be in the best interests of the state to allow the USDA to enforce it.

Come to find out, the USDA pays each state (via the state's agriculture dept.) somewhere along the lines of $1,000 per name/address of every individual in the state who owns any livestock or poultry at all. Names cannot legally be sold...er... submitted to the USDA unless the above-mentioned committees vote to allow it in their state. However, here in Massachusetts the director of our Ag dept (Mass. Dept. of Agricultural Resources), Doug Gillespie, submitted possibly thousands of names of livestock/poultry owners to the USDA in exchange for the "payola"... illegally ... as Massachusetts didn't even have a committee in place to review NAIS, never mind vote on participating in it.

So, many of us have had our privacy compromised and we don't know who of us has had his/her name illegally sent to the USDA as livestock premises. The info is in the hands of our state Ag Dept. because every municipality/town is required to keep a "barn book" -- a census, usually taken by the town or city's animal control officer -- of every livestock or poultry animal being kept in the town. This info is sent to the state ag dept. So, Mr. Gillespie just took the data from every Mass. communities' barn books and sent them to the USDA.

One of the chilling aspects of NAIS is the requirement that we (poultry/livestock owners) report to the national data base EVERY move our animals make off-property, and when they conmingle with livestock or poultry that is not part of our own flock. This means 4-H poultry shows will require huge red tape, with kids' parents having to account for every movement. If birds are sold at a tailgate swap, the people making the transactions will have to report their purchases/sales to the USDA within 48 hours or face penalties of up to $1,000 a day.

It is just a load of restrictive, freedom-stealing bureacratic BS -- all to fatten the already fat profits of Big Ag Industry.

Ptooey. We must fight to maintain our most basic human rights -- to farm, to keep animals, to barter... without Big Brother breathing down our necks and controlling our every move.