NAIS—won’t work
by Karin Bergener

If, for one moment, we ignore the lack of any factual, legal, or scientific basis for NAIS, we have plenty of other problems. For one, the program can’t be managed.

The NAIS database will be the largest database of its kind. It will dwarf all others, including the Social Security database. Compare the 300 million people in the United States versus 100 million cattle plus 60 billion chickens, plus all the sheep, goats, ducks, llamas, and so forth. The sheer size is beyond anything previously attempted.

USDA completely ignores the fact that about half the people covered by NAIS don’t own a computer, and the number is greater when you include people with a computer but no internet connection. If you have no computer and internet connection, you will have to figure out a way to file your tracking reports with the database within 24 hours, which probably means lots of runs to the post office for overnight mail.

Then there’s the idea that tag numbers will be accurately typed by farmers on the web and government employees reading handwritten mailed-in reports. We all know what happens when we do a monotonous job, especially one with fine detail—mistakes. Change one letter or number in a horse’s tag and presto, someone in Tennessee reports they’re trail riding a horse from Oregon. The data will never be correct enough to be reliable.

And the idea that multiple state databases can somehow merge their information in the event of an animal disease outbreak is equally absurd. Ever upgrade your computer and found out you can’t just convert the old system to the new one, so you have to type in the names of all your friends and other contacts again? Well, that’s just a database, and you’re trying to do what USDA says it can. Ever received mail from a company and found your address jumbled up? That’s the same process—someone tried, and it just didn’t work.

Bureaucratic Bungling—The worst of all this is that determinations regarding our animals will be left in the hands of government employees and systems. For a nightmare example of what can go wrong, we need look no farther than to David Dobbin, whose 567 cattle were slaughtered by the British government, as reported in England’s The Daily Mail, March 30, 2007. The cattle were seized because of slight irregularities with paperwork compliance.

England’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs claimed to have found irregularities between the cattle’s European Union passports—the documents that monitor the movement of cattle around Europe—and the eight-digit ear tags all cows are required to wear by law. But, said Mr. Dobbin, the inspectors accidentally recorded some numbers incorrectly and “My £500,000 [$1,000,000] herd was condemned to death by red tape.”

The government authorities were unprepared to care for the animals, and a judge ordered them slaughtered. We have no reason to believe NAIS will be free of human error. What would your local department of agriculture office do if it had to seize 567 head of cattle? Could it care for them? What would do you suppose would happen then?

Depopulation—Someone I know who works for a supplier to the corporate agriculture industry recently told me the purpose of premises registration is to implement the 10 kilometer kill zone. “It worked quite nicely in Maryland with the avian influenza outbreak there.” That reliable source said the purpose of the breed associations is to intercede on behalf of their members, to request an exception to a kill order.

What about people whose animals aren’t registered with associations? And how, on a practical level, could it possibly work? Would we all get the same notice? And be able to hire a lawyer, or engage our breed association to plead with the state and federal officials? We all know about favoritism and that in the heat of a public panic over an animal disease outbreak we could not expect even treatment. Let’s face it, some folks have more access to people in power than do others.

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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 Spring 2007 issue of Rural Heritage.