Please Don't Tag My Small Farmer's Beef Cattle

Small Farms and The Environment Will Bear the Cost of NAIS

In a statement released to the press on Tuesday, Past President and current Board member of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, Taaron Meikle says that NAIS , the USDA’s National Animal ID System is being implemented to benefit Confined Animal Feeding Operations at the expense of America’s small farmers.  Click here to see full press release from Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.

I spoke yesterday with a cattle rancher, Jonas Stoltzfus, who is also the President of Pennsylvania Independent Farmers and Consumers Association, who concurs with Taaron, that the USDA’s unrealistic and misleading cost assumptions spell doom for small farms and ranches.

Jonas is attending the USDA Listening Session in Harrisburg, PA today, to speak of his opposition to micro-chipping his cattle. He sent me this link to a Dutch website which catalogs the animal abuse that these tagging methods involve. He loves his cattle and would never want to subject them to such treatment.

Our USDA claims that NAIS is necessary to compete in the global marketplace. How out of step with the times are they?  The buy-local trend means that more and more Americans want locally raised meats. We really need to question why the over concern about exports, especially when it means we may lose our rapidly growing heritage farming industry.

The green revolution is spreading, and consumers are starting to connect the dots between our environmental problems and industrial food production methods. We are responding in large numbers to the call to “buy local” because we want to create a healthier land. As we do so, we know human health will increase. The last thing we need is for our federal government to create markets abroad for CAFO produced food.

The sustainable food movement seeks to  replace CAFO farming with humane livestock farming, gradually making the transition back to traditional, holistic farming methods. We are voting with our food budgets for a change. We hope to inspire an agricultural renaissance that will reform our food policy.

If the government helps industrial AG to find new markets abroad, we won’t rid ourselves of environmental ills, nor will CAFO farmers be encouraged to return to proper animal husbandry.