NAIS was designed by Monsanto and the big meat packers. It is not about food safety but about destroying our farmers. You can't have penalties like this without intending to destroy people. www.opednews.com/articles/NAIS---the-Fourth-Componen-by-Darol-Dickinson-080711-756.html And all the questions about ownership and forcing people against their will onto a contract that is terribly suspect and which the government will not change to allay serious and legitimate and the most fundamental concerns about property rights (that is, democracy itself), is not a contract but a taking. And it is sadistic, as well.
www.opednews.com/articles/The-SCAM-behind-NAIS--Ou-by-Derry-Brownfield-081130-795.html www.opednews.com/articles/NAIS--a-coerced-AND-hidde-by-Marti-Oakley-090115-879.html
And then there is the issue of what the intent is with the animals. If it is anything like what the USDA did to Linda and Larry Faillace, and their children, Jackie, Heather, and Francis, it has zero to do with food safety and everything to do with how grotesquely corrupt the USDA is.
[The following is from Ronnie Cummins, head of the Organic Consumers Association, reviewing the book, Mad Sheep. It was such a powerful indictment of the USDA, I am using it and inserting my own comments to make it applicable to NAIS. My comments are in brackets.
"What we are confronted with ... is a government conspiracy. A politically inspired ritual of fabricated charges, manipulated science, and doctored evidence. A modern witch-hunt to sacrifice the innocent in order to protect the massive profits and scandalous practices of the guilty. A diabolically orchestrated, media-scripted search and destroy ... [our farmers], ... [and] fan the flames of fear and ignorance, and to foster our continued dependence on an abusive Big Brother government that has promised to protect us from the contemporary terrors that lurk, well, nearly everywhere.
"In their highly acclaimed 1997 book, Mad Cow USA: Can the Nightmare Happen Here, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton recount how they used a Freedom of Information Act investigation to pry loose secret planning documents from the beef industry and the USDA. These liberated documents included a "crisis management" plan for how to manipulate public perceptions and concerns surrounding a likely outbreak of [any] disease in the United States.
"... Since stopping the feeding of animals to animals and ordering universal testing of cows for mad cow were deemed serious threats to industry profits, the USDA's public relations specialists came up with diversionary tactics: round up imported livestock across the country and harass family farmers like the Faillaces, all in the name of preventing mad cow disease in America.
"Meanwhile the disinformation flacks at the USDA, aided by public relations firms and the news media, worked to sweep under the rug the alarming fact that U.S. corporate agribusiness was doing exactly the same thing that Europeans had been doing to spread mad cow disease‹feeding cattle, pigs, chickens, households pets, and deer and elk on game farms billions of pounds of blood, slaughterhouse waste, animal fat, and tainted manure every year.
"The Faillace's sheep were absolutely healthy and presented no risk whatsoever to the American public ... [and] the USDA has done little or nothing to help U.S. sheep farmers eradicate the disease [or to eradicate other diseases but has in fact lowered standards and cut back on inspections and is ready to import animals from countries where there is hoof and mouth, tuberculosis, and Mad Cow].
"... As for those farmers and consumers who won't behave like proper sheep, who refuse to shut up and swallow the official story: harass and threaten them, seize their animals, ruin their reputations, and destroy them financially and psychologically.
"Linda and Larry Faillace, and their children, Jackie, Heather, and Francis, along with the Vermont consumer and farm activists who stood by them, are not only good shepherds, they are national heroes. USDA bureaucrats, ... indentured politicians, and their puppet masters behind the scenes‹the leaders of the corporate-industrial agriculture and pharmaceutical complex‹are the real offenders.
"USDA blame[d] the Canadians for our first mad cow cases, and shortly thereafter threaten[ed] a Kansas meat packer, Creekstone Farms, for the "crime" of wanting to test all of their cows at slaughter for Mad Cow disease.
"[Because] millions of Americans no longer trust the government or the media ... [and] are turning away from industrial meat and food and voting with their pocketbooks for healthy, sustainable, locally produced organic foods, [the USDA and the corporate-industrial agriculture and pharmaceutical complex are out to eliminate all competition because in a fair competition, they would go under. So, they design NAIS and its evil twin Premises ID to destroy farmers and possibly take their land].
"But voting with our consumer dollars is not enough. The mad sheep battle [described in the Faillance book] is not an isolated case. Armed with $90 billion in taxpayer money each year, the USDA is waging war against all of us‹consumers, family farmers, farm animals, and the environment. The direct and collateral damage of this war includes rampant water, air, and food pollution; an epidemic of cancer, birth defects, obesity, and hormone disruption; pollution by genetically engineered crops; an unsustainable, massive venting of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases; pesticide and antibiotic contamination; proliferation of junk food; systematic exploitation of small farmers, farm workers, and slaughterhouse workers; and the dumping of millions of tons of subsidized crops and meat at below the cost of production on developing nations, thereby destroying the livelihoods of millions of small farmers and rural communities.
"It's time to follow the example of the Faillace family. It's time to stand up and fight, not only for ourselves, but also for future generations."
Ronnie Cummins
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