Attorney, Farmers Challenge NAIS at Local Meeting
Submitted by Editor on Thu, 11/09/2006 - 1:27pm.
DAVE LEFEVER
Editor
LITITZ, Pa. — Independent-minded farmers heard an earful of concerns about the Pennsylvania premise identification program and the larger proposed National Animal Identification System at a Nov. 4 meeting here at the Midway Mennonite Reception Center.
Dr. Mary Zanoni of Canton, N.Y. gave background on the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) and pointed out how she believes the program will be costly, especially to small-scale farmers, and ultimately threaten their liberty and livelihood.
Zanoni, a former attorney for federal courts in New Jersey, is director of Farm for Life, an organization based in upstate New York dedicated to promoting sustainable, local agriculture.
About 35 people attended the meeting last Saturday. A majority of them were Amish and Mennonite dairy and livestock producers from the area.
An October meeting in Morgantown hosted by Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff drew about 80 people, many of them opposed to premise ID and NAIS, as were those organizing and attending the Lititz meeting.
.000Tool or Threat?
Wolff said this week that the Pennsylvania premise ID program was launched at his request and has received about $600,000 in USDA funding.
“I saw how critical it was,” Wolff said. “It’s a very, very important tool when dealing with an outbreak” such as avian influenza.
However, organizers of the meeting last Saturday see premise ID and NAIS as government intrusion and a threat from large corporate agricultural interests.
Zanoni said the original rationale for NAIS when proposed by the National Institute for Animal Agriculture was to increase international trade by providing animal traceability. More recently, the focus has shifted to the program’s potential animal health benefits, a move Zanoni believes was meant to help sell the idea to hesitant producers.
“Trade for big companies is still the real motive,” Zanoni said.
Major supporters of NAIS, she said, are large corporations in the livestock and dairy industries, including eartag manufacturers — “people who stand to profit from it.”
While Pennsylvania’s premise ID program is still officially called a voluntary program, producers throughout the state have been receiving premise ID notifications in the mail assigning a seven-digit number to their farm.
“PAFarms” is the official name of Pennsylvania’s farm premise identification (ID) program, “a GIS or Geographic Information System that will allow the (Pennsylvania) Department of Agriculture to effectively manage all emergency situations, mainly within the Bureau of Animal Health and Diagnostic Systems,” according to www.pafarms.org. PAfarms is a cooperative effort between the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and Penn State Cooperative Extension.
Registering farms (as in the PAFarms project) is the first phase of the National Animal Identification System. The second and third phases of NAIS involve tagging individual animals and, finally, using a national database to track the status of animals.
.000‘Focused on Cattle’
The animal ID phase of the program proposes to use different methods depending on the species. For horses, a recommendation on the table is to implant computer microchips in the animals.
According to Wolff this week, Pennsylvania has “taken the equine component off the table” because horses are not part of the food system. The state will not require horse owners to acquire a premise ID or individual animal IDs. Microchips implanted in the animal, Wolff said, can be useful in preventing theft of the animals but will not be required.
For cattle, the preference is radio frequency identification (RFID) eartags. (These have already been implemented by some groups on a pilot basis, including dairy herd improvement organizations in Pennsylvania.)
On farms where animals move in groups through the production chain, such as poultry in confinement operations, the animals will likely be identified by group rather than as individuals.
Individual animal identification and tracking “is really focused on cattle,” Wolff said. That’s because, compared to poultry and hog production, “cattle tend to have a lot more stops along the way” in the production chain, he said.
How sheep and goats identifications will be handled has not been determined yet, according to Wolff. Individual tags are a possibility, he said.
To date, producers have generally not been paying for any part of the identification program, including premise IDs or eartags. However, that is bound to change, according to Zanoni.
.000Cost Concerns
“(The government) will tell you now it’s free,” Zanoni said. “What they don’t tell you up front is that there will be costs to producers.”
For the premise ID program, she estimated the yearly cost to producers could be about $50 per farm, based on calculations she made on the resources it would take to manage the system.
Wolff said this week that Pennsylvania does not charge for premise IDs — and will not charge for them in the future.
“For premise ID, there is absolutely no cost,” he said.
While the program is voluntary, Wolff said producers have been receiving new premise IDs to replace existing numbers already on file for various health programs and consolidating them into one new number that is part of a GIS system.
Farmers who have no previous herd numbers on a government database are not required to have a premise number, although “We encourage them to participate,” Wolff said.
After pilot programs, it is generally acknowledged that dairy and cattle producers will need to pay for RFID tags. Price figures given for these tags range from about $1.60 to $3.25 each. Zanoni said that the accuracy of the tags can be about 70 percent, potentially causing havoc when it come to tracking animals. The cost of more accurate tags is about $20 each, she said.
According to Wolff, RFID tag accuracy “hasn’t been a discussion point.
“I understand that they’re pretty accurate,” he said.
For the third phase of NAIS, Zanoni said she expects that a cost will be charged to producers for each report filed on animal status change.
“There’s no telling how much that (cost) might go up,” she said.
According to Zanoni, the system favors large-scale operations, where only one premise ID is needed to cover a great number of animals. Additionally, for small-scale farmers such as pastured poultry producers, individual ID numbers and reporting for each bird may be required because of management practices unique to the system.
This will add up to “an enormous inconvenience and expense to the small farmer,” Zanoni said.
.000Privacy Issues
Of possibly even greater concern than cost to some farmers is the concept that their information will be contained in a vast government database.
For producers concerned about privacy of information who already have a herd number on file with the state (prior to premise ID), Wolff said, “We just keep trying to stress that they are already in the database.”
Beside worries about government access to private information, some are also skeptical about assurances that, in the age of computer hackers, the information could not end up in the hands of adverse interests such as animal rights’ groups, a concern expressed by one person at the meeting in Lititz.
Zanoni said that the direction of the Pennsylvania premise ID program appears not to be limited to animals. She pointed out a paragraph on the PAfarms Website noting that, “PAFarms is not just for farm animals. Similar to PDA’s need to notify animal producers in the event of a disease outbreak in their area, PDA also needs the capability to notify non-animal farm owners of plant pathogens that may impact their area.”
Two states — Wisconsin and Indiana — have mandatory premise ID programs in place so far, according to Zanoni. Pennsylvania is among states implementing premise ID on a “voluntary” basis. Legislatures in other states, such as Vermont and Maine, have not approved of the program, causing the states’ departments of agriculture to hold off on implementation.
In Pennsylvania, a bill in the Senate, S. 865, was passed earlier this year to approve premise ID, but the legislation stalled in the state House.
“PDA went ahead with it without a law in place,” Zanoni said.
Wolff said this week that the state “will keep encouraging” farmers to receive premise IDs even if the program is not mandated by law.
.000‘Religious Objections’
Zanoni handed out a draft of a letter that farmers could return with premise ID notifications to the state with “cause of refusal” including USDA’s claim that premise ID participation is voluntary.
Reasons for rejecting the program cited in the letter include “religious objections, cost of the program, further consolidation of agriculture in corporate hands, and negative effects on personal privacy.”
A federal bill, S. 3862, and its version in the House of Representatives, H.R. 6042, says that USDA is not allowed to mandate NAIS, but the bill “is a trick” to get individual states to mandate the program, Zanoni said.
The legislation, known as the Talent-Emerson Bill, also exempts most of the NAIS program from public disclosure, according to Zanoni.
“As of now, the government has no real right to conduct (NAIS),” she said.
Zanoni said that part of her decision to actively oppose NAIS was because of a letter she received from an Amishman in New York state “saying he would rather be a martyr than comply.”
She said this week that another Amishman from Pennsylvania recently told her that his children farming in Wisconsin have chosen to raise produce rather than animals to avoid complying with premise ID and NAIS.
Other presenters at the meeting included organizers James Landis of Lebanon County and Jim Schlosser of Lancaster County.
Landis noted that premise ID and NAIS violate parts of the U.S. Constitution, including the First Amendment.
Landis called premise and animal ID “a direct affront” to the small producers who represent 92 percent of the farmers in Pennsylvania.
“It restricts freedom of farmers to produce healthy food” and “is a dictatorship of the food chain,” he said.
According to Landis, NAIS is supported by corporations whose goal is dominance of the global food supply.
Schlosser focused on biblical references to end-times theology, linking NAIS to the “mark of the beast” referred to in the Book of Revelations.
DAVE LEFEVER
Editor
LITITZ, Pa. — Independent-minded farmers heard an earful of concerns about the Pennsylvania premise identification program and the larger proposed National Animal Identification System at a Nov. 4 meeting here at the Midway Mennonite Reception Center.
Dr. Mary Zanoni of Canton, N.Y. gave background on the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) and pointed out how she believes the program will be costly, especially to small-scale farmers, and ultimately threaten their liberty and livelihood.
Zanoni, a former attorney for federal courts in New Jersey, is director of Farm for Life, an organization based in upstate New York dedicated to promoting sustainable, local agriculture.
About 35 people attended the meeting last Saturday. A majority of them were Amish and Mennonite dairy and livestock producers from the area.
An October meeting in Morgantown hosted by Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff drew about 80 people, many of them opposed to premise ID and NAIS, as were those organizing and attending the Lititz meeting.
.000Tool or Threat?
Wolff said this week that the Pennsylvania premise ID program was launched at his request and has received about $600,000 in USDA funding.
“I saw how critical it was,” Wolff said. “It’s a very, very important tool when dealing with an outbreak” such as avian influenza.
However, organizers of the meeting last Saturday see premise ID and NAIS as government intrusion and a threat from large corporate agricultural interests.
Zanoni said the original rationale for NAIS when proposed by the National Institute for Animal Agriculture was to increase international trade by providing animal traceability. More recently, the focus has shifted to the program’s potential animal health benefits, a move Zanoni believes was meant to help sell the idea to hesitant producers.
“Trade for big companies is still the real motive,” Zanoni said.
Major supporters of NAIS, she said, are large corporations in the livestock and dairy industries, including eartag manufacturers — “people who stand to profit from it.”
While Pennsylvania’s premise ID program is still officially called a voluntary program, producers throughout the state have been receiving premise ID notifications in the mail assigning a seven-digit number to their farm.
“PAFarms” is the official name of Pennsylvania’s farm premise identification (ID) program, “a GIS or Geographic Information System that will allow the (Pennsylvania) Department of Agriculture to effectively manage all emergency situations, mainly within the Bureau of Animal Health and Diagnostic Systems,” according to www.pafarms.org. PAfarms is a cooperative effort between the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and Penn State Cooperative Extension.
Registering farms (as in the PAFarms project) is the first phase of the National Animal Identification System. The second and third phases of NAIS involve tagging individual animals and, finally, using a national database to track the status of animals.
.000‘Focused on Cattle’
The animal ID phase of the program proposes to use different methods depending on the species. For horses, a recommendation on the table is to implant computer microchips in the animals.
According to Wolff this week, Pennsylvania has “taken the equine component off the table” because horses are not part of the food system. The state will not require horse owners to acquire a premise ID or individual animal IDs. Microchips implanted in the animal, Wolff said, can be useful in preventing theft of the animals but will not be required.
For cattle, the preference is radio frequency identification (RFID) eartags. (These have already been implemented by some groups on a pilot basis, including dairy herd improvement organizations in Pennsylvania.)
On farms where animals move in groups through the production chain, such as poultry in confinement operations, the animals will likely be identified by group rather than as individuals.
Individual animal identification and tracking “is really focused on cattle,” Wolff said. That’s because, compared to poultry and hog production, “cattle tend to have a lot more stops along the way” in the production chain, he said.
How sheep and goats identifications will be handled has not been determined yet, according to Wolff. Individual tags are a possibility, he said.
To date, producers have generally not been paying for any part of the identification program, including premise IDs or eartags. However, that is bound to change, according to Zanoni.
.000Cost Concerns
“(The government) will tell you now it’s free,” Zanoni said. “What they don’t tell you up front is that there will be costs to producers.”
For the premise ID program, she estimated the yearly cost to producers could be about $50 per farm, based on calculations she made on the resources it would take to manage the system.
Wolff said this week that Pennsylvania does not charge for premise IDs — and will not charge for them in the future.
“For premise ID, there is absolutely no cost,” he said.
While the program is voluntary, Wolff said producers have been receiving new premise IDs to replace existing numbers already on file for various health programs and consolidating them into one new number that is part of a GIS system.
Farmers who have no previous herd numbers on a government database are not required to have a premise number, although “We encourage them to participate,” Wolff said.
After pilot programs, it is generally acknowledged that dairy and cattle producers will need to pay for RFID tags. Price figures given for these tags range from about $1.60 to $3.25 each. Zanoni said that the accuracy of the tags can be about 70 percent, potentially causing havoc when it come to tracking animals. The cost of more accurate tags is about $20 each, she said.
According to Wolff, RFID tag accuracy “hasn’t been a discussion point.
“I understand that they’re pretty accurate,” he said.
For the third phase of NAIS, Zanoni said she expects that a cost will be charged to producers for each report filed on animal status change.
“There’s no telling how much that (cost) might go up,” she said.
According to Zanoni, the system favors large-scale operations, where only one premise ID is needed to cover a great number of animals. Additionally, for small-scale farmers such as pastured poultry producers, individual ID numbers and reporting for each bird may be required because of management practices unique to the system.
This will add up to “an enormous inconvenience and expense to the small farmer,” Zanoni said.
.000Privacy Issues
Of possibly even greater concern than cost to some farmers is the concept that their information will be contained in a vast government database.
For producers concerned about privacy of information who already have a herd number on file with the state (prior to premise ID), Wolff said, “We just keep trying to stress that they are already in the database.”
Beside worries about government access to private information, some are also skeptical about assurances that, in the age of computer hackers, the information could not end up in the hands of adverse interests such as animal rights’ groups, a concern expressed by one person at the meeting in Lititz.
Zanoni said that the direction of the Pennsylvania premise ID program appears not to be limited to animals. She pointed out a paragraph on the PAfarms Website noting that, “PAFarms is not just for farm animals. Similar to PDA’s need to notify animal producers in the event of a disease outbreak in their area, PDA also needs the capability to notify non-animal farm owners of plant pathogens that may impact their area.”
Two states — Wisconsin and Indiana — have mandatory premise ID programs in place so far, according to Zanoni. Pennsylvania is among states implementing premise ID on a “voluntary” basis. Legislatures in other states, such as Vermont and Maine, have not approved of the program, causing the states’ departments of agriculture to hold off on implementation.
In Pennsylvania, a bill in the Senate, S. 865, was passed earlier this year to approve premise ID, but the legislation stalled in the state House.
“PDA went ahead with it without a law in place,” Zanoni said.
Wolff said this week that the state “will keep encouraging” farmers to receive premise IDs even if the program is not mandated by law.
.000‘Religious Objections’
Zanoni handed out a draft of a letter that farmers could return with premise ID notifications to the state with “cause of refusal” including USDA’s claim that premise ID participation is voluntary.
Reasons for rejecting the program cited in the letter include “religious objections, cost of the program, further consolidation of agriculture in corporate hands, and negative effects on personal privacy.”
A federal bill, S. 3862, and its version in the House of Representatives, H.R. 6042, says that USDA is not allowed to mandate NAIS, but the bill “is a trick” to get individual states to mandate the program, Zanoni said.
The legislation, known as the Talent-Emerson Bill, also exempts most of the NAIS program from public disclosure, according to Zanoni.
“As of now, the government has no real right to conduct (NAIS),” she said.
Zanoni said that part of her decision to actively oppose NAIS was because of a letter she received from an Amishman in New York state “saying he would rather be a martyr than comply.”
She said this week that another Amishman from Pennsylvania recently told her that his children farming in Wisconsin have chosen to raise produce rather than animals to avoid complying with premise ID and NAIS.
Other presenters at the meeting included organizers James Landis of Lebanon County and Jim Schlosser of Lancaster County.
Landis noted that premise ID and NAIS violate parts of the U.S. Constitution, including the First Amendment.
Landis called premise and animal ID “a direct affront” to the small producers who represent 92 percent of the farmers in Pennsylvania.
“It restricts freedom of farmers to produce healthy food” and “is a dictatorship of the food chain,” he said.
According to Landis, NAIS is supported by corporations whose goal is dominance of the global food supply.
Schlosser focused on biblical references to end-times theology, linking NAIS to the “mark of the beast” referred to in the Book of Revelations.
