Blogwire is a compilation of local news and information gathered by area citizens and Xpress staff. The Blogwire news aggregator includes press releases, stories from other news outlets, opinion pieces and updates from area blogs
Posting to Blogwire is open to any resident interested in participating. We welcome you to post what you see as important local news and information. Contact us to join.
Word is spreading on Twitter and on small-farm listserves that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will drop its program to monitor the movement of all livestock, a plan that encountered widespread resistance from farmers, particularly those from small farms, who argued it would bankrupt them.
The New York Times wrote on Feb 5:
Faced with stiff resistance from ranchers and farmers, the Obama administration has decided to scrap a national program intended to help authorities quickly identify and track livestock in the event of an animal disease outbreak.
In abandoning the program, called the National Animal Identification System, officials said they would start over in trying to devise a livestock tracing program that could win widespread support from the industry.
The program had been pushed by large industrial farms. However the American Farm Bureau Federation is seeking to distance itself from the failed program. The Times reports: “It was just overwhelming in the country that people didn’t like it, and I think they took that feedback to heart,” said Mary Kay Thatcher, public policy director of the American Farm Bureau Federation.
Here’s what Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced at a press conference yesterday: “After concluding our listening tour on the National Animal Identification System in 15 cities across the country, receiving thousands of comments from the public and input from States, Tribal Nations, industry groups, and representatives for small and organic farmers, it is apparent that a new strategy for animal disease traceability is needed. I’ve decided to revise the prior policy and offer a new approach to animal disease traceability with changes that respond directly to the feedback we heard.” http://www.bovinevetonline.com/newsCN.asp?contentid=983362
Xpress covered the plan when it was introduced in 2006:
The National Animal Identification System, conceived in the wake of the mad cow disease scare, envisions a central database that would enable public officials to trace any animal in the U.S. back to its farm of origin within 48 hours. This, it’s argued, would help keep sick animals out of the food system—or, in the case of a disease outbreak, get a quarantine in place.
The NAIS, a joint project of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and individual states, is voluntary for now. A draft plan, released last April, lays out a tentative time line for phasing in the program. ... At present, however, the plan calls for requiring anyone who keeps livestock—from alpacas to cattle to the casual chicken—to register their farm or other property with a unique, seven-digit “premises ID” by 2008. And the following year, producers will have to go further, identifying any animals that might ever leave the property.
“I understand that you’ve got to have a license to have a gun,” said Sherry Williams, who raises nearly 50 dairy goats, including La Manchas, at her Listening Eagle Farm near Marion. “But now they’re telling me I have to have a license to farm? That’s exactly what this is.”
The Xpress article can be found at http://www.mountainx.com/news/2007/0329farm.php/
|
The Bush administration proposed the federally run ID system after the discovery of the nation’s first case of mad cow disease (BSE) in 2003; that can (according to the infectious theory) afflict humans. USDA had spent more than $130 million without coming up with a workable system… However, BSE can be a naturally occurring disease, so not an infectious disease. WHY? Because, about the BSE disease; this was never justified scientifically! It was pure, math-model-driven science fiction. But it was pushed very vigorously by the British science establishment, which has never confessed to its errors… In addition, meat and bone meal (MBM) is a valuable raw material providing energy, protein, vitamins and minerals, which vary in levels, but that are very well digested by the animals…- see the recent article; Meat and bone meal back into feed; (January 12, 2010) and there also my comment about this article (http://www.allaboutfeed.net/weblog/from-feed-to-food/#comments). See also other relationships, according to my web http://www.bse-expert.cz and recent presentation at 29th World Veterinary Congress in Vancouver; Neurodegenerative Diseases and Schizophrenia as a Hyper or Hypofunction of the NMDA Receptors (http://www.bse-expert.cz/pdf/Veter_kongres.pdf). |
|
|
Of course they did. This was a nonsensical program that would have been impossible to implement. |
|
|
February 10, 2010 Greetings, IN my opinion, i think we need NAIS. i think as a consumer, we have a right to this information. as a Country importing our product, they have a right to know, it should be law. it should be mandatory that when an animal disease or human disease there from break out, the animal and or it’s product can be traced. and as a producer of that product, if you are too worried about confidentiality, you are trying to hide something, then you should not be in the business. how in the world can knowing from where a cow comes from i.e. traceability, be such a threat to the producer, unless they simply want to hide something? in 2010, the USA, in relations to cattle identification and tracing, could not trace their @ss if they had both hands on it, in my opinion, and going by past history of the last two documented mad cows. the USA has been discussing this for over a decade. I don’t understand it, all these other Country’s that have some sort of Animal Traceability in place, they are and have been trying to eradicate BSE, that have had a feed ban in place, that have been abiding by it, testing in numbers to find and eradicate the TSEs, and the USA just seems to be doing the opposite in many ways it seems to me. if the USA is not going to trace it’s meat products, why should other Country’s trace theirs? The USA is BSE GBR III, all of North America is BSE GBR III (with all the evidence of breaches in the bse feed ban, the breaches in the BSE surveillance program, i personally believe it is BSE GBR IV). The problem is, the USDA just never accepted it (BSE GBR III), and then changed the rules with the BSE MRR. this BSE MRR policy literally trashed 30 years of attempted BSE GBR eradication of this disease. What about other trading partners with the U.S.A. that DO HAVE a traceability system. i think Australia is getting ready to roll over and get MRR’ed, therefore they too will just be another victim of allowing all strains of Typical and Atypical BSE/TSE into their Country via the USDA OIE BSE MRR policy, a policy of trading all strains of mad cow disease globally. The O.I.E., by bending over for the USDA with this damn BSE MRR policy, has sold their sole to the devil, and in doing so, sold yours too. ...
14th International Congress on Infectious Diseases H-type and L-type Atypical BSE January 2010 (special pre-congress edition)
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 NAIS MAD COW TRACEABILITY DUMPED BY USDA APHIS 2010
|
Terry
Feb 12, 2010
at 12:30 PM
|
hlasny