Have you read this AP story on Chinese seafood imports? You really need to read the unbelievable audacity of these governmental agencies who purport to safeguard our food supply. The shipments were clearly marked and tagged for further testing for carcinogens and unapproved antibiotics. The cargo was held on very large ships at major ports on the west coast. Everyone knew where the product was and what needed to be done to it.
And yet.......being that it's the government, something broke down and at least one shipment out of four was released for consumption without the required testing taking place.
The more the government tries to do, the more they do poorly. Which brings me to the point of the title of this post: the USDA has tried repeatedly to make mandatory the National Animal Identification System for every livestock animal in the USA.
Under NAIS, as the owner of a backyard flock of chickens, I would be mandated by law to implant a microchip in every one of my chickens. I would have to pay for the chips and the radio frequency device the local USDA office would use to "track" my chickens. USDA claims that having a nationwide database (which they promise they'll keep secret and secure) would allow them to "respond" to an outbreak of some killer animal disease (bird flu, hoof-and-mouth, etc.) threatening to sweep the nation's food supply.
Let me ask you to apply just a little bit of logic here: how am I supposed to believe that the same government that cannot manage or be trusted to test seafood shipped from China when they know where the seafood is (on the boat, in the port) and they know what's potentially wrong with it (contaminated with bad stuff that could kill Americans) can effectively manage my personal farm data on the backyard chickens?
Go to the NoNAIS.org website if you are unfamiliar with the program and read up on the punitive damages this same ineffective government would impose on me if I either mess up my paperwork or if they mess up my paperwork.
And then, do a little bit of reading about the hoof-and-mouth outbreak in Great Britain. Either the lab-originated virus was released on purpose as a sabotage weapon or it was released due to error by someone on staff at the government lab testing for antidotes for such a breakout. The Government that is supposed to protect will wind up being the party responsible for the death, carnage and economic loss suffered by the farmers.
I beg you to reconsider putting the federal or state government in charge of managing anything more than they are already doing (poorly) and in fact, I would welcome a serious discussion about scaling back their current responsibilities significantly.
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2 comments:
Is it just me, or has the Bush administration left its mark by creating substantial increases in totalitarianism in America? I mean, I don't really know much about the guy, but it seems like every time I turn around, there's something about changing what defines invasion of privacy, the possibility that the U.S. government is using its relationship with Blogger to collect personal data...and microchipping chickens.
That is outrageous. Up here, we use a paperwork system, where the farmers keep the records and submit them for review. e.g., beekeepers are supposed to know exactly what hives each lot of honey came from and so on. It's still a big pain in the left pinky toe, I assure you. But we were exempt as hobbyists, as far as I recall.
If not, doesn't matter. We're getting out of a lot of things, and just homesteading for ourselves now.
Cat, Lazy Creek Zookeeper
Hey Cat:
I don't blame Bush for the RFID tagging as much as I blame overzealous bureaucracy. Most of these Dept. of Ag types that are pushing the program are life-long members of an organization that has done more to harm farming in the US than pests and drought. Their efforts at tagging and tracking are a simple extension of an old-fashioned power grab, enabled by new, portable and inexpensive technology.
I like Bush as a person; I think he's a genuine Christian with a large burden of protecting our country and citizens from attack. The "people tracking" via surveillance doesn't bother me as much as long as they keep it to tracking terror plots. When they issue the call for microchipping people, we'll be going underground (or to New Zealand or somewhere less obvious).
Thanks for stopping by. I'll ping you on your blog later.
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