The following is a letter to the editor about this article in Cooperative Living a magazine published 10 times a year by the Virginia, Maryland & Delaware Association of Electric Cooperatives.

Dear Editor,

I read with interest your article by Don Gardner in the “Food For Thought” Column of August’s Cooperative Living magazine. I sincerely hope you will offer equal space in your publication for the opposition to voice their concerns and to counter the obtuseness of Mr. Gardner’s view point.

If your readers will carefully examine the issue for themselves they will find that Mr. Gardner is blinded by his association with the very organizations which help fund and promote Animal ID. The very same organizations which cannot get their story straight on the reasons behind the program and which cannot explain the utter waste of 100 million dollars of tax payer money at the expense of farmer’s and citizens rights to privacy.

While some of us may object to the Governments unwarranted explorations into our private affairs, others of us are equally concerned with the growing control of agriculture the USDA and their Corporate overlords–Cargill, Monsanto, ADM, Swift, Smithfield, Tyson, etc–have and the subsequent loss of livelihood for small farmers.

To believe Mr. Gardner stance on this issue would be to forget that one of the main reasons US meats are not competitive in the “global marketplace” is because of the USDA’s refusal to test all cattle sent to slaughter for BSE. They claim a program of that sort would be too expensive and unnecessary. Yet the USDA is trying with all their might to refuse Creekstone Farm’s right to perform their own testing so as to compete in this very market. Why is that do you think? Certainly such a program would cost far less than the $100,000,000 already spent on NAIS–which is only in the “draft” stage yet.

Furthermore, Mr. Gardner bandies about Foot-and-Mouth (FMD), a USDA buzzword these days–along with Avian Influenza–all meant to instill fear and distrust in farmer’s everywhere. This country hasn’t had an FMD outbreak in 70 years and unless someone purposefully causes such a thing, I doubt we will. The only thing NAIS will do in such an instance will allow the USDA to march in directly and kill, or slaughter, or “depopulate” all your animals pronto. Yet, studies are showing that FMD–which is not deadly–can be survived and resistance to the virus can be built up allowing herds to survive in the future without all the waste, negligence and cost to the country, the food industry and the farmers.

In the same paragraph Mr Gardner mentions the use of NAIS ID numbers in the Colorado Snow Crisis this past year. Yet, under the rules of the USDA and NAIS, the use of Premise ID information for such a purpose was in direct violation of the agreement for the information’s use–has the USDA lied to farmers about the privacy and untouchability of this information? Did the US taxpayer really need to spend tax money to have hay airlifted into cattle after funding a program which violates its own mandates? The loss of those animals was not eminent and certainly didn’t warrant the use of Animal ID or Military resources. Yet that is what Mr. Gardner is condoning. Likewise Mr. Gardner is very free with our money, stating that $2.80 per cow is nothing to spend on such a wonderful program like Animal ID. However, that is the price of the system if you have a herd of 10,000 head of cattle. Does he not know that 80% of America’s beef is owned by farmers and ranchers who have between 1 and 50 head? The rates for those cattle are more like $280 per animal. Far beyond the already price controlled profit a beeve brings. With Beef Industry access to data–hey, they already released it so as to drop hay on cattle–the beef market could be manipulated to prevent farmers and ranchers from achieving any profit from their cattle. The only people who stand to gain from such a system are the large multinational Agricorporations.

Finally Mr. Gardner all but admits he knows nothing of the “Organic Movement”. If he did understand it he would realize that the true motivation of the organic food movement is to be local and sustainable. Certainly it is in opposition to Conventional agriculture which uses petroleum based fertilizers, pesticides and other crude oil derived inputs. But the organic food movement is also about supporting localized agriculture as opposed to centralized, corporatized, enlarged factory farmed, global AgriCorporations. These enterprises which value “economies of scale” are bloated and become easy targets of terrorism and disease. It has been clearly proven that Bird Flu began on large scale corporate factory farms and spread to the wild population of fowl. Likewise Avian Influenza’s spread throughout the world has been via truck, not migratory birds on the wing. Theoretically these bird shipments are already tracked and noted on delivery invoices and shouldn’t need a government ID program to tell where the birds came from and where they went, ie Farm X to slaughterhouse Y.

Organic agriculture–by which I mean local, sustainable, small scale, de-centralized agriculture, not pesticide, drug and fertilizer free agriculture on the corporate, industrial scale–is food secure by its very nature. When you buy from the farmer’s in your area you know where you food has come from and can visit the farm to know how it is produced and what has happened to it all along the way. How more secure can you get? This food has come from 10 or 50 or 150 miles away, not the usual 1500. This food has passed through far fewer hands and can be directly traced back to point of origin without elaborate and costly schemes. Schemes which are only good while the animals are still alive. How does NAIS prevent a recall of 10 tons of ground beef, or tens of millions of units of botulism infected product? It doesn’t and it can’t.

No. Under Mr. Gardner’s simplistic view of Animal ID America will loose its small farmers, hobbyists and homesteaders and hand a favorable package of financing and regulations to the biggest players in the food industry giving them a competition free market. America will loose the ability to choose buying factory farmed meat at the supermarket or grassfed beef and organic eggs from the Farmers’ Market. There will be no small players left to provide the choice, to provide economic stimulus to the local economy, to keep alive age-old rural traditions. They will have been taxed out by a burdensome, costly, useless program geared not at disease prevention (how can numbers stop a disease? Education will, not numbers) or food safety (the $100 Millon would have been better spent at the FDA securing our borders from toxic imports and providing inspectors to keep botulism out of canned meats and E. Coli out of ground beef), but geared towards benefitting the largest players in the food industry who’s daily profit exceeds the money any given small farmer earns in a lifetime.

It is a shame Mr. Gardner cannot see how he is helping defeat agriculture in America. It is a shame he supports 40% of beef in America being imported from unregulated cattle. It is a shame he supports 80% general food imports into this country–also largely unregulated and unchecked as only 1% of imports are inspected. It is a shame we have to even be discussing such a wasteful, counterintuitive, destructive policy as Animal ID and NAIS.

Thank You. Sincerely,

Neal Foley
Chef, Farmer, No Nais advocate

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