Assault on Small Farmers—Who's Behind It?
by Justin Sanders

Our government started this plan as a voluntary program to register our farms and animals to supposedly protect us and our livestock from diseases. Yet, if some pandemic or epidemic sweeping through the livestock population would demand such drastic measures, government’s first act wouldn’t be punching an ear tag into every farm animal they could catch. Any first-time mother who knows to hand-test a forehead for fever can tell you tagging ears to fight disease is ridiculous. No, during an epidemic government agents kill the infected animals and all animals in the herd. Then they spread out and test neighboring herds and destroy all herds with animals that test positive.

So if the intent of NAIS is not to fight disease, what is its purpose? Follow the money. Ask, “Who benefits?” Agribusiness lobbied the USDA to create a system to protect them from legal liability if an epidemic ever does break out. More, NAIS would protect agribusiness market share, forestalling a public revulsion against their product by “confirming” that only a few animals, not thousands, were sick. NAIS enables agribusiness conglomerates that concentrate thousands of animals (and so concentrate the chance for spreading diseases) to point their finger at someone else. Here’s the scenario:

Consumers in Sheboygan get sick from something they ate at a local fast food joint. That fast food joint gets its meat from ABC cow factory. ABC cow factory buys cows from XYZ feedlots. Those feedlots had cows numbered 1q10 through 1q500 in their possession and those cows came from 15 small farms in suburban Tempe.

Goodbye 15 small farms in suburban Tempe. Hello scapegoat for fast food joint, slaughterhouse, and feedlots.

To protect themselves, these large corporations will effectively put small-scale farmers out of business. The farmers' costs for complying with the program, combined with the threat of fines and jail time for not complying, will drive small farmers off the land. Meanwhile NAIS sets up the same corporations as the only entities granted the ‘privilege’ to raise animals, since they, of course, are the only ones that can be trusted to follow such a plan to protect the “national herd.”

The NAIS abolishes private property rights in farms and in animals. Run by a branch of the USDA, the NAIS considers your animals to be not yours, but part of “the national herd.” Plainly, they are right. If they can force you to register your farm and your animals, you do not own them. They own them, because they control them. You are only inventorying property and animals for their true owner, the federal government.

“But,” I hear you say, “I have only a few chickens and a horse. NAIS won't apply to me, right?”

Wrong. We will all be required to submit GPS [Global Positioning System] coordinates of our farms and the RFID [radio frequency ID] of each of our animals to the USDA database. The NAIS provides no exemptions whatever. Anybody with one chicken, one horse, one cow, one sheep, one goat, one bison, one llama, one alpaca, one turkey, one duck—all must register both premises and animals.

And when I say must, I mean must. The plan calls for eventual mandatory enforcement of premises registration and animal identification. Mandatory means “forced” and “enforcement” means “putting into force.” Not of your own free will. The government will fine you, put you in jail, or seize your animals because you kept them without registering them with the government. Raising livestock without a license, I reckon they’ll call it. From then on, you’ll be breaking the law for being a farmer without government permission.

Who will pay for NAIS? You will. It does not favor the small farmer, but corporations with huge budgets. These conglomerates get to write off government registration fees and all the other costs, but the write-off means almost nothing to small farmers who must first come up with the money to comply. The NAIS is free now, but will not be in the future. On their website, the NAIS states, “Even with public funding, there will be costs to producers.”

There’s a time tax, too. States, tribes, producers, managers of livestock shows and events, market operators, processing plants, auction barns, feed stores, veterinarians, service providers and third parties will all have to provide labor for this system.

By registering your car, you pay taxes. By registering yourself as the owner of your home, you pay taxes. By registering yourself with a social security number, you pay taxes. By registering with the NAIS, you open yourself for more taxes. Taxes for being a farmer and taxes on your animals will come.

• Can We Defeat NAIS?
• What You Can Do

Justin Sanders of Westpoint, Tennessee, lives among terrorist chickens, lambs, cows, proletarian pigs, Percherons, Haflingers, and a Belgian, while raising three sons, none of whom yet has a government-approved tag. He is working with his state’s legislators to protect Tennessee farmers from NAIS. This article appeared in The Evener 2006 issue of Rural Heritage.