[PAA-Discuss] U.S. Government's Plan to Protect You from Terrorist Livestock

[Ron and Kris Graham]

http://www.alternet.org/rights/62858/ 

This Jim Hightower article is another long one at three pages but worth the
read. It seems that our illustrious government has come up with another way
to screw small farmers, organic producers, hobbyists etc. The plan is to
make all owners of farm animals tag each and every animal with a microchip
in order to "protect" the public from animal borne disease. What this
National Animal Identification System or NAIS is really set up to do is put
small farmers and organic producers OUT OF BUSINESS. They have to purchase
the microchips to put into EACH of their animals, log and report each and
every "event" in the life of the animal, pay fees to have their location and
animals registered in the NAIS database, and incur stiff penalties of up to
$1,000 a day for noncompliance. This legislation is being pushed by big
agribusiness giants like Cargill and Tyson who don't have to tag each and
every animal but merely ONE animal since they do business on such a huge
scale. Also, these corporate giants have the money for the fees that must be
paid. Anyone with any brains knows there is absolutely NO WAY to track each
and every move an animal makes unless of course, that animal is penned up
all its tortured life and never leaves its cage or pen. This legislation is
simply a scheme to drive small farmers out of business and put ALL food
production in the hands of corporate giants.

I haven't had a chance to visit the website, www.nonais.org
<http://www.nonais.org/> , but I am going to and would encourage all of you
to do so, as well, to find out what you can do to stop this insanity. I
realize if everyone gave up eating meat it would go a long way to protecting
the public from animal borne disease and also would stop a lot of this
cattle ranching and pig/chicken/sheep farming, however, this is not
realistic, and small farmers are going to continue to raise hogs and
chickens and sheep and ranchers are going to continue to raise cattle. We
can do everything possible to SUPPORT small farmers and ranchers and keep
big agribusiness from running them out of business. Please visit the above
linked website to see what you can do to help.

As always, commentary is appreciated.

Kris

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