Interesting post at Boing Boing today:

Feds plan digital spying on pigs, llamas, terrorcritters.

Boing Boing quote the LA Times:

A Bush administration initiative, the National Animal Identification System is meant to provide a modern tool for tracking disease outbreaks within 48 hours, whether natural or the work of a bioterrorist. Most farm animals, even exotic ones such as llamas, will eventually be registered. Information will be kept on every farm, ranch or stable. And databases will record every animal movement from birth to slaughterhouse, including trips to the vet and county fairs. But the system is spawning a grass-roots revolt.

Various interesting comments @ Boing Boing:

Caveats

According to the article, there are a few caveats:

1) Pigs are excluded.

2) Agribusiness is excluded.

Somehow that just makes the idea even worse…

- Christovir: Link.

British farmers borrow animals to fool inspectors

Erm… is’t there at least some good in this idea?

Part of the reason behind Britain’s terrible record on animal diseases (e.g. foot-and-mouth) is that farmers “borrow” livestock from each other, so that they appear to have a larger herd when the dept. of Agriculture inspector comes by to calculate their subsidy. (Farms are subsidised based on the number of cattle.)
- spazzm: Link.

No mad cow screening

If this meant we’d do proper screening for mad-cow disease, that’d be awesome. Sadly the current administration is against that.
- dharrison: Link.

Why It Might Be a Bad Thing

“Apart from the cost, why is this a bad thing?”

Well, first and foremost, cost is the number one reason it’s a bad idea, so don’t dismiss it. Who will pay for this? Will it be subsidized by tax dollars or will farmers pay and then pass on the cost to consumers? Do we really need another reason to make meat more expensive?

2. Who’s going to monitor this? Looks like it will be creating more bureaucracy in a system already overrun with it. How and where will this information be stored? Who will have access to it?

3. Why is agribusiness excluded? What would be a more effective terrorist attack, wiping out Farmer Brown’s 5000 chickens or on Tyson’s 50 million?

- thivai: Link.

To Control the Food Supply

No, this is to control the food supply. Look at what the Nazis did to the Ukrainians during WWII and you will see this is an attack on those who want to live off the grid and be self sufficient.the new regulations are very burdensome for small farmers. For instance, the “Premises Identification” part of the plan requires owners to report any movements or visitors of the animals, even in the case of a few chickens and goats. The cost and time for such monitoring is prohibitive and also an invasion of their privacy. when you control the food, you control the people. we need to wake up folks!
http://www.nonais.org

- Angelastarling: Link.

Help Shut Down Family Farms, Promote the Nanny State

It’s really going to hurt the small farmers and make it too expensive to make a living.

… This is meant to really help shut down the family farms and people who rely on themselves to provide food for their table rather than the Nanny state.

- america_in_danger: Link.

Keeping Food Safe: Initiative is a Good Idea

I doesn’t seem to me that the people representing the anti-NAIS side of the table have done their research properly. I know you should take what you read from the government with a grain of salt but the actual website for NAIS, http://animalid.aphis.usda.gov/nais/index.shtml seems to lay things out fairly simply.

The program is voluntary at the Federal level and is free besides what a farmer might incur incidentally, a typical tag costs about $2.50 according to online farm supply retailers. States can mandate participation in the program but have not to my knowledge.

… Seems to me like this initiative is a good idea. I want to know that my food is safe.

- prisonersdelights: Link.

We already have this in Mud Island … Kafkaesque

We already have this in Mud Island, have done for years. all cows have passports & must be recorded every time they are moved from one field to another (EU subsidies are involved somehow). Sheep have ‘em too. Dunno about pigs. I have worked in the administrating department. ‘Kafkaesque’ does not even begin to describe it.

- Gilbert Wham: Link.

Stupid Summaries

The summaries that Xeni posted are just stupid.

First, this proposal has been around in one form another for years and has nothing to do with terrorism.

Rather, it is designed to allow for tracking down any disease outbreak, such as foot-and-mouth disease, BSE, etc. (Google to see the problems the gov’t had tracking the source of that BSE positive calf a few years ago).

- Brian Carnell: Link.

Wired “Danger Room” post isn’t accurate

That Wired “Danger Room” post isn’t accurate in at least 3 respects:

a) the motivation for this system is not bioterrorism but infectious diseases in livestock, especially bovine spongiform encephalopathy (”mad cow” disease) and avian flu, which pose a risk to human health;

b) agribusiness is not “excluded”; the “exemptions” mentioned might refer to the fact that individual animals in large groups are not required to be individually tagged if they are kept together throughout their lifetimes, which is reasonable if your goal is to identify and control infectious disease outbreaks;

c) swine are definitely included in the program.

At least these are the facts as laid out in the LA Times article, provided in the original post.

- d913: Link.

Equine Flu in Australia: records spotty and ill-kept

Australia is only just now getting an outbreak of equine flu that started last August under control - and part of the reason it was so unmanageable was that because records of animal movements were spotty and ill-kept. Cost the racing industry a fuckton of money, and that was just the start of it.

- alisong76: Link.

Fewer Small Holders, More Agri-Business

pestilence or war; same end result: fewer small holders, more agri-business.

- Takuan: Link.

Animal transport and processing facilities totally unaccounted for

I can understand and appreciate the growing need to track the progression of diseases. Two things don’t make sense to me though. The first is why accumulation of tracking data stops once the animal leaves a farm.

This leaves animal transport and processing facilities totally unaccounted for. Unless the animals are strictly segregated, it’s entirely possible that it could spread when they are aggregated for transport. If it survives outside the body (like avian flu virus) it can even infect later arrivals.

- cteegarden: Link.

Reform the System

If the goal is to prevent transmission of disease from animal to human, this is a backward and band-aid like approach. Why not reform our overcomplex, fundamentally unsafe, national meat and food production system.

- TheFool: Link.