Island of Distrust—Who Controls USDA?
by Karin Bergener

Over the past 40 years, the power of the executive branch of government—both federal and state—has slowly but inexorably increased. Books have been written about how it has happened, but basically Congress has abdicated its role and allows agencies to do as they please. Somewhere in these agencies, however, we would hope to find rational minds that would control these abuses. But no. To see why, we need to look at who is involved.

It’s all the same people. USDA, state agriculture departments, and agriculture industry groups and their employees are all members of the same industry organizations. Look at the organizations close to the USDA and the state agriculture departments:

The National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA), the chief non-government proponent of NAIS and its architect, is a nonprofit charitable organization with a mission “to be the forum for building consensus and advancing solutions for animal agriculture and to provide continuing education and communications linkages to animal agriculture professionals.” Not a bad sounding goal. However, its major event every year is a Technology Conference at which the sole subject is National Animal Identification and the technology to implement it.

The United States Animal Health Association (USAHA), which describes itself as “a science-based, non-profit, voluntary organization. Its 1,400 members are state and federal animal health officials, national allied organizations, regional representatives, and individual members. USAHA works with state and federal governments, universities, veterinarians, livestock producers, national livestock and poultry organizations, research scientists, the Extension service and seven foreign countries to control livestock diseases in the United States. USAHA represents all 50 states, 7 foreign countries and 18 allied groups serving health, technical and consumer markets.” Okay, not bad either. Except that USAHA, despite being a “science-based” organization, has produced no scientific basis for implementing NAIS, and neither has NIAA, USDA, or any state agriculture department.

The membership of NIAA and USAHA look like mirrors, because they are essentially all the same people: American Farm Bureau, Holstein Association, American Association of Bovine Practitioners, American Quarter Horse Association, American Horse Council, American Sheep Industry Association, American Veterinary Association... and that’s just the first letter of the alphabet. USDA has three memberships in USAHA, with the Department of Homeland Security slacking at only one membership (USDA and DHS share responsibility for the Animal and Plan Health Inspection Service, which is running NAIS). Currently 39 state agriculture departments are listed as members of NIAA and 16 state funded universities. Every state’s state veterinarian is a member of USAHA.

Yes, it’s true. Your tax dollars support memberships in these organizations.

Now before you decide an evil empire is at work here, let’s state the obvious: people in a profession join professional organizations so they can network. Corporations hope to get business contracts. Officials wish to get scientific information and share knowledge to decrease their workloads and costs. And no doubt you can find animal health information on the websites of both NIAA and USAHA. We’ll put aside whether you agree with what they publish, such as information that feeds the on-going hysteria over bird flu. So there are plausible reasons for people to belong to these organizations and keep bumping into each other.

• Island Mentality

Karin Bergener of Freedom, Ohio, is an attorney and a cofounder of the Liberty Ark Coalition dedicated to defeating NAIS. This article appeared in The Evener 2007 issue of Rural Heritage.