What is NAIS and how do you feel about it?

[Arklady]

The only way to kill big business is with a massive economic collapse... is everyone ready for it cause they got the jitters now... I am so broke now I have no idea how to feed my birds anyhow they may as well be broke as me.

Arklady/no nais

 

[rufus]

The system reminds me of the Ukraine in the 1930's. Everything accounted for, everyone starving.

Will it safeguard our livestock? No, all it takes is a couple or terrorist driving down country roads throwing out contaminated material to infect our livestock.

The foot and mouth disease hop scotched all over Britain even after they stopped the movement of livestock. No one thought about controlling the movement of people.

Did you notice how all of the fires in Southern California just happened to burn along highways? Then it stopped at the border. Maybe the arsonist didn't want to have his immigration papers checked.

Will the system be implimented? Probably. There is nothing as enduring and everlasting as a bad idea.

Rufus

 

[Rosalind]

I used to be a field microbiologist, before I went to grad school for engineering. My previous corporate job was development work on a sterilization system used for, among other things, sterilizing anthrax-infected post offices, Salmonella-contaminated food processing plants, BSE-contaminated slaughterhouses and army bioweapons decontamination. So, I think I know a little bit about infection control in the field.

The first thing to know is, what is the source of contamination. For poultry, this could be anything from migratory birds to backyard chickens to poultry received to a factory farm to workers themselves bringing a flu virus into a facility. Other associated sources of contamination include feed, insects in the building, water sources, waste treatment processing and the interior plumbing of the building.

You can't control the migratory birds no matter how much you'd like to.

You might be able to control the neighbor's pet ducks, sort of.

You can definitely control the animals received by the factory farm, which could be upwards of hundreds per day. That requires a full-time vet on site, and probably a full-time diagnostics lab on site. That's expensive. Most guys in suits don't want to hear that they need to deal with increased operating costs for as long as they wish to stay in business.

You can definitely control the workers coming to work sick, but in order to do that you need to have basically unlimited paid sick days and hire only documented, legal workers who pass a medical exam, and have a company nurse on site every hour that the building is open for business. Again, that's expensive.

You can definitely control the feed by doing quality control testing of each batch of feed that enters the building. You can definitely control the water sources and interior plumbing by the same method, just sample the water monthly. Again, you're looking at expensive testing to add to the overhead budget. And if a test comes up as positive for some type of pathogenic bacteria, the costs of shutdown, draining and sanitizing the plumbing and feed equipment are not trivial. Think a few million for the average factory farm. And how are you going to house, feed and water all those animals in the meantime?

You can definitely control the way waste is processed from the plant; however, if your waste treatment (e.g., a waste lagoon outside the building, such as most pig factory farms use) is found to be a source of contamination by harboring disease-bearing insects such as mosquitoes, then you're looking at a steep bill from an engineering contractor to re-engineer your facility from the ground up. Those bills run into the multimillions, in case you're wondering.

Considering that most factory farm operations I've seen are very weak on their own waste processing, insect control, water testing, feed testing and HR sick-time policies, I have my own proposal for the USDA to control zoonotic infections, help preserve family farms (without subsidies or development rights buyouts, imagine that!), improve the genetic diversity of livestock, thus making them more resistant to infections, improve the real estate value of towns where such facilities are located, control foodborne illnesses, improve biosecurity, and improve working conditions for agricultural workers all in one fell swoop:

Limit the number of animals that can be kept or processed per acre of real estate, so that farming is decentralized amongst several small facilities rather than a few large processors.

Yes, that means economies of scale that currently bring people $1/lb. Wal-mart chicken will not happen, and chicken and eggs will cost a little bit more. They will NOT cost $10/lb. or whatever the Free Market scare-mongers rant about, and I know this because I can do math, including cost/benefit analysis, too--us engineers are really good at it. If biosecurity and all that good stuff is worth it to America, then it should be worth it to pay $1/lb more for chicken or $0.50/doz. more for eggs temporarily until the Free Market either adjusts to the inflated cost or else technology finds a way to make a savings elsewhere. Such as, for example, growing feed locally instead of importing it from China, or processing and packaging food on site instead of shipping unprocessed stuff all over the very' place (thereby spreading more disease). Growing local feed and processing food on site has the added benefit of making more jobs in rural areas that are often impoverished, and preserving green space, for which there are often tax breaks.

Basically, I see NAIS as a cruel joke invented to crap on American jobs and small farmers, which does little for biosecurity. I am not surprised, though, nor do I think it's a plot by the evil gubbermint to get us all: The scientific experts currently informing the government are not field biologists or epidemiologists. They are actually physicists, whose scientific experience is in preventing Cold War era countries from getting nuclear weapons. Since nuclear weapons require plutonium, uranium, etc., things that are relatively hard to get and are best controlled by centralizing their locations, they are following that model of centralizing potential disease vectors. This is not a workable model for biology, though, because the plain hard fact is that pathogens like influenza, anthrax and bubonic plague are literally everywhere--very easy to find in nature, and already spread all over the place. And it's not hard to make something more pathogenic, or to make a transgenic organism; it can be done using your high school student's biology textbook and some household ingredients. Imagine if everyone, literally everyone, had at least one small nuclear reactor in their backyard, complete with instruction manual, and you will see readily that this approach has no hope of success. But that isn't how physicists think, nor is it something they could be expected to imagine.

 

[seminolewind]

I personally think that people ought to need a license to have an animal(s). The choice should be theirs to put the number on the animal. If animal found with no number , it can be shot, etc, and if they have a number, the owner is fined. There's too many animals running loose, and there's too many negligent and irresponsible people out there, and its people that should be responsible for their animals.

 

[lexustami]

Can someone point out where on the USDA website it says that participation in the NAIS will be mandatory? I can only find where it says it will be voluntary and they have no intentions of making it mandatory. Also, where does it say they will be using RFID and GPS?

Thanks.

Tami

 

[Cassandra]

Rosalind, you are my hero. That was an awesome response.


Me? Against NAIS just because I am FOR being left the **** alone.

Cassandra

 

[speckledhen]

Tami, terms/words are being redefined by the USDA all the time. They say voluntary, but if you are required to be registered to participate in all sorts of programs, then that is NOT voluntary, is it? They are trying to sneak it in the backdoor, all the while making it, on the surface, seem more palatable to the general public. Well, the general public has no idea about NAIS nor do they care. It's us who care and they are trying to pull the wool over our eyes here.