July 2006 may be one of the most important milestones in the recent history of agriculture and the way you do business. It marks a time for you to be pro-active and change the projected course of history and your own destiny.

In July of 2006 the USDA will have a forum for public comment on its livestock master plan to implement its new projected agenda the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). The costs and regulations associated with NAIS may well spell the end of many small farmers, hobbyists, and people supplementing their own food supplies. It will most certainly spell the end of our right to privacy as we know it, unless we do something to modify or stop it. Our critical time to shape this may well be this July.

Full compliance with NAIS is expected sometime after 2009. Your home will be registered and keyed into a federally based global positioning system (GPS) that is so powerful it can tell where your truck or buggy is parked and what color it is any time they like. Registration and tracking applies to every animal you own, down to the last hen and her newly hatched chicks, even your kid’s pet pony. Your kid won’t be able to ride to Grandma’s house on a whim without reporting it to the federal government. Any farm animal not duly tagged and tracked cannot be bought, sold, lost, bred, or die and be disposed of outside your home without fear of federal fines or confiscation.

...and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.—Revelations 13:17 (New American Standard Bible)

Is this the America we want? Are we willing to trade our liberties to subscribe to false securities?

The proposed NAIS plan will force everyone who owns even a single animal (cattle, sheep, goat, any poultry, pig, horse, and so forth) whether for intended food use, pleasure, or breeding to become part of a mandatory system of registering their premises, micro-chipping every animal, satellite tracking, and reporting of {any} movement of animals off your land for {any} reason. The cost of that program will be borne by the individual owners, and you can bet the farm your overall taxes will rise as a result.

What about our Amish and Mennonite communities? This regulation cuts deeply into some of their religious beliefs, as well as their farming methods. Will they be forced to choose between their religion and community beliefs and the federal mandates?

The impact on small farmers, English or plain, is not being considered, but the impact on the big guys is. They are the only exceptions to the rules. Under the current plan big farms are exempt from tracking and tagging individually (because it would hurt their profit margins) and as a result the current proposal allows them to track by the herd in groups instead of the more costly individual method.

We are told the purpose of NAIS is to protect us. It’s all being done under the guise of a federal protection program to keep our food supply safe from disease and terrorism.

The truth is, the plan does {not} guarantee success and, in fact, defies logic and falls terribly short of its goal, particularly by showing favoritism and giving broad exemptions to the very entities (factory farms) that are the root of the disease issue.

And chew on this for a moment: Do you really think any program that leaves out the factory farms could possibly prevent contaminations in our public meat supply after it ships out from those farms? Sure, we can find out where it came from, but isn’t that a bit late?

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Get informed, discuss, and show a united front. Liberty and privacy are rights guaranteed by our Constitution. Don’t give them away on the promise of false security.

Victoria Tollman of rural West Liberty, Kentucky, is a long-time member and supporter of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy and the Equus Survival Trust, and is a breeder and conservationist of endangered historical breeds of horses and heritage chickens on her family’s self-sustaining farm. This article appeared in The Evener 2006 issue of Rural Heritage.