77 Groups Laud Senate Subcommittee for Unanimous Vote
on Tester/Enzi Amendment to Slash NAIS Funding

Washington, D.C. -- R-CALF USA is pleased that the U.S. Senate, through a unanimous consent vote, supported an amendment sponsored by Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.., that slashes funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) National Animal Identification System (NAIS) by one-half in the 2010 Agriculture Appropriations bill.

"...perhaps most important, USDA has pursued NAIS without working in cooperation with the very industry sector that would be directly impacted by the agency's radical new proposal. Instead, USDA has proceeded to implement NAIS despite overwhelming opposition from the men and women who comprise our U.S. livestock industry, and particularly from those involved in the largest segment of our livestock industry -- the U.S. cattle industry," wrote R-CALF USA President/Region VI Director Max Thornsberry in a letter sent to Tester before the vote.

"As evidenced by USDA's numerous listening sessions held throughout the U.S., this overwhelming opposition arises from those individuals who have the greatest stake in ensuring that our livestock herds remain protected from the introduction and spread of disease -- the individuals whose very livelihoods and businesses are dependent on preventing, controlling and eradicating diseases," the letter continued. "This, above all else, should demonstrate to Congress that USDA's NAIS program is wholly inappropriate and unsuitable for the United States livestock industry."

Thornsberry pointed out that USDA already has spent about $140 million of taxpayer money on NAIS, claiming the program would allow animal disease traceback within 48 hours, but such an arbitrary timeframe would not appear to prevent the spread of diseases with long incubation periods, such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or bovine tuberculosis. Nor would NAIS appear to prevent the spread of diseases that incubate very quickly, such as foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), which would necessitate more immediate containment actions to prevent disease spread beyond an infected animal.

Additionally, R-CALF USA signed on with a letter to the entire Senate from a coalition of 76 other organizations that oppose NAIS.

"Contrary to its stated purposes, NAIS will not address animal disease or food safety problems. Instead, NAIS imposes high costs and paperwork burdens on family farmers...In this letter, we will touch on just a few of the reasons that NAIS is fundamentally flawed:

1) No analysis or quantification of the alleged benefits. USDA has made unsupported assertions that our country needs 48-hour traceback of all animal movements for disease control. Yet USDA has failed to provide any scientific basis, including risk analysis or scientific review of existing programs, to support this claim. USDA has also asserted that NAIS would provide 48-hour traceback, but has failed to address the many technological and practical barriers. Existing disease control programs, combined with measures such as brand registries and normal private record-keeping, provide cost-effective traceback. A new and costly program such as NAIS is unnecessary and potentially counterproductive.

2) High costs. The costs of complying with NAIS will be unreasonably burdensome for small farmers and many other animal owners. The costs of NAIS go far beyond the tag itself, and include: premises registration database creation and updates; tags and related equipment, such as readers, computers, and software; 24-hour reporting requirements, replacement costs for lost tags, imposing extensive paperwork burdens; labor for every stage of the program; stress on the animals; qualitative costs, from loss of religious freedoms, privacy, and trust in government; and enforcement.

3) No food safety benefits. NAIS will not prevent food borne illnesses from e. coli or salmonella, because the contamination occurs at the slaughterhouse, while NAIS tracking ends at the time of slaughter. Thus, NAIS will neither prevent the contamination nor increase the government's ability to track contaminated meat back to its source. In addition, NAIS will hurt efforts to develop safer, decentralized local food systems.

4) Unfair burdens placed on family farms and sustainable livestock operations. In addition to the costs, NAIS would impose significant reporting and paperwork burdens on small farms. In addition, sustainable livestock operations, which manage animals on pasture, would face higher rates of tag losses than confinement operations due to animals getting their tags caught on brush or fences. NAIS essentially creates incentives for CAFOs, with the accompanying social and environmental concerns.

"NAIS epitomizes what government should not do: it should not impose costly and highly intrusive regulatory burdens on private industry and private citizens without first considering alternatives, without first establishing a critical public need, and without first determining the effect that a significant government mandate would have on the culture and economy of the U.S. livestock industry," said Thornsberry. "We view the Tester/Enzi amendment as an essential step towards requiring USDA to begin cooperating with U.S. livestock producers to prevent the introduction and spread of animal diseases and pests in livestock without violating the rights and privileges of the individual owners a! nd caretakers of those livestock."

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R-CALF USA (Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America) is a national, non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the continued profitability and viability of the U.S. cattle industry. R-CALF USA represents thousands of U.S. cattle producers on trade and marketin! g issues. Members are located across 47 states and are primarily cow/calf operators, cattle backgrounders, and/or feedlot owners. R-CALF USA directors and committee chairs are extremely active unpaid volunteers. R-CALF USA has dozens of affiliate organizations and various main-street businesses are associate members. For more information, visit www.r-calfusa.com or, call 406-252-2516.

NAIS ~~ over estimated, over promised, over budget, unnecessary, unneeded and unwanted.

Brad Headtel

The NAIS is a years-old concept that has outlived its time and fails to recognize that economic instability is our greatest national hazard, not, if all the animals have a government number.

Mary--Fireworks Farm, CA.

NAIS is not a direct ban on meat or chicken or goat meat or ... but a slow, complex legal threat entailing loss of more and more control and then of isolated bankruptcy or of just giving up farming or ranching completely.

Linn Cohen-Cole, 2008

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State
(Source: New York Times, Oct. 28, 1973)

Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

Brad Headtel-------On Bruce (USDA) Knight's pandemic projections
of national livestock catastrophic die-offs.

Bureaucracy never sleeps.

Neil Young

Makes ranchers paw the dirt----like a bull looking forward to the virtues of castration.

on NAIS-------Brad Headtel

Only Jesus loves the stupid. As He looks closer toward the DC Beltway------it's an ever increasing stretch.

Brad Headtel

You are known by the low morals of the bureaucrats you tolerate.

Brad Headtel

Phony science begets phony public policy.

Walter Williams

NAIS~~~~ Mother of all unnecessary federal job creation schemes.

Brad Headtel

The issue is not the issue. Who decides the issue is the issue. If you decide the issue you are a free man. If a politician decides the issue you can un-elect him, but if a bureaucrat decides the issues you are his pawn and practically without recourse.

Harold Hockstatter

It is sad that here in the United States of America we must fight our government to protect our own rights, but fight I will.

 Jerry Fennell--From "Shattered Dreams"

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

On NAIS -- H.L. Mencken

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it..

Adolf Hitler

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

Robert Heinlein

If a government program is not worth doing at all,   it is not worth doing well.

...on NAIS - Brad Headtel

Communism ~~ the government owns the means and method of production.  In fascism the government controls the means and method of production.

We're not happy until you're not happy...

USDA official on the Westland/Hallmark Meat recall of Feb. 17, 08

NAIS is one of those issues that everyone wishes never became an issue. It is a genie that will not go back in the bottle.

Troy Marshall, Seed Stock Digest, 1/7/08

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

on the NAIS program..... - Frederick Douglass

We're out here branding cattle, worrying about our best horse going blind, when all of a sudden the USDA is working at mach speed filling our saddle bags with heavy NAIS rocks.

Michelle Reid

....NAIS matters less than flea sweat.
....producer interest in NAIS is less robust than a paper pig in a barbeque pit.

Wes Ishmael, Contributing editor,
BEEF Magazine, Dec. 2007

I work day and night to prevent NAIS!

This is the first time in my life I have had the opportunity to save billions of dollars of wasted government tax for my fellow livestock producers all over the nation. As it was said about Queen Esther of old, from the great palace of Shushan, '...who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this.?'

I feel the NAIS program, as planned, will embezzle from 10 to 60% of the profit from every livestock producer, and that is not an acceptable price to pay for a naive USDA concern about future unknown or previously eradicated diseases.
Every consumer or livestock owner should spend full time to prevent the enforcement of this cost to our nation.

Darol Dickinson

NAIS will not be mandatory under my tenure. I repeat will not!

Mike Johanns on mandatory National Animal Identification Surrender.
Sec. of Agriculture Mike Johanns quit the job two months later.

NAIS will put Livestock owners under closer surveillance than terrorists, illegals aliens, drug dealers, and convicted sex offenders/child molesters. Currently, only convicted sex offenders/child molesters have to register their premises.

BSE, bovine spongiform encephalopathy takes five to seven years to develop. It's not actually a disease that you have to rush to trace. You can take about all the time you need. What you want to do is prevent it in the first place.

Reno, Nev. --- 11/29/07 Jay Truitt          
NCBA VP for governmental affairs,
on the USDA proposed 48 hour
emergency disease trace back.

Most of the stuff people worry about ain't never gunna happen.

Will Rogers . . . . on NAIS

No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.

Mark Twain

What this country needs are more unemployed bureaucrats.

Edward Langley

Each time we give up information about ourselves to the government, we give up some of our freedom. The more the government or any institution knows about us, the more power it has over us. When the government knows all of our private information, we stand naked before official power; stripped of our privacy, we lose our rights and privileges. The Bill of Rights then becomes just so many words.

Senator Sam Ervin, June 1974.

The USDA is a run away agency out of control, with total disregard for U.S. citizens, yet full regard for other countries and free trade at all costs.

Dr. Max Thornsberry, President R-CALF USA

NAIS . . . a program that somewhat resembles an expensive plan to use baseball bats to kill mosquitoes . . . when we haven't found the mosquito---and the plan was proposed by a bat manufacturer.

NAIS . . . when freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a fake front for the urge to rule.

H.L. Menchen

Is the USDA run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it?

NAIS is like a fat man in a swim suit - you may not appreciate what you see, but what isn't revealed is even more fearful.

NAIS Employee -- Never argue with a person whose job depends on not being convinced.

Remember - A major animal disease outbreak to a State Veterinarian is like a multi-car wreck to an auto body shop.

NAIS is the very model of how an unresponsive Executive Branch agency can cooperate with a globalist industrial agriculture and a technocratic corporate elite to force an undesired program upon an unwilling populace.

Mary Zanoni

NAIS press releases from USDA could present caviar in such a light we want to run from it like a falling meteorite.

Many associations embrace the NAIS because their paid leadership does so, regardless of what their members truly want.

Marida Favia delCore Borromeo

On NAIS - If USDA comes up with a stupid idea -- If Congress votes to fund it -- If 296,000,000 taxpayers write the check -- I'm sorry, it's still a stupid idea.

NAIS is a disease masquerading as its own cure.

NAIS is the result of looking for trouble, not finding it anywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying costly incorrect remedies.

As the government is doing wrong to us, like with NAIS, you gotta know they are doing wrong to people all over the world, right?  Why do all these countries hate the USA?

Linn Cohen-Cole

Once government gets its hands on new power, it is never relinquished.

Henry  Lamb ~~~ Sovereignty International