For Further Information, contact:
Judith McGeary, (512) 243-9404 - judith@farmandranchfreedom.org
Karin Bergener, (330) 298-0065 - bergener@config.com
Having wasted over $100 million dollars during the last four years in attempts to implement the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently awarded a grant to researchers at Kansas, Colorado, Michigan, and Montana State Universities, to perform a belated cost-benefit analysis of the program.
NAIS is a three-step program in which everyone who owns even one livestock animal - even just one chicken or a horse - would have to register their property with the state and federal governments. This includes people's private homes, homesteads, and small family farms. Each animal would have to be individually identified, in most cases using microchips or other electronic identification. And then movements would have to be reported, including such things as shows, sales, and deaths.
Since the unveiling of the plans for NAIS two years ago, many individuals and organizations have voiced strong opposition to it. Among these is the Liberty Ark Coalition, which spans the full political and geographical spectrum of the country. The Coalition opposes any government run, funded, or subsidized NAIS. "Private individuals can choose to do what they want with their property, but not if they affect the rights of others and use the pressure of government mandates, coercion, or funding," says Randy Givens, one of the founders of the Coalition. Givens is a retired U.S. Army Colonel who now teaches Government at a local college.
Today, the Coalition sent an open letter to Dr. Ted Schroeder of Kansas State University, who is heading up the NAIS cost-benefit analysis team. The 6-page letter detailed the many problems with quantifying the alleged benefits of NAIS, and the even longer list of costs that would result from the program. Judith McGeary, another member of the Coalition, says: "We believe that a thorough analysis, which covers all of the points we raise in the letter, would inevitably lead to the conclusion that so many people have reached through simple common sense and logic: NAIS will impose huge costs on both individual animal owners and our entire society, in return for a 'feel good' program that does nothing to truly address disease or food safety issues."
The letter is available online here. McGeary continues: "We hope that the fact-based approach of the letter will encourage the researchers to take our comments seriously, rather than ignore them. Unfortunately, given the way NAIS has been handled up to this point, we have little confidence that the study will truly address the many problems with the program."
Liberty Ark Coalition has 100 organizations and over 1600 individual supporters that span the full political spectrum. Its sole purpose is to stop the NAIS. To learn more about NAIS, and what it means for farmers and consumers, visit: www.libertyark.net.
