Why Many Massachusetts Organic Farmers and Consumers Oppose Mandatory Animal Tracking

Animal tracking is an information management system that would enable a central authority to monitor the whereabouts of virtually all the animals in the country. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has proposed implementing such a system in the US by 2008 or 2009. Although initially proposed for livestock, the USDA has specifically refused to rule out eventually including pets and companion animals such as dogs and cats. Called the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), it has three components.

1) Premises registration would require all farms, factories, slaughterhouses, or homes where even a single livestock animal (cow, horse, pig, chicken, sheep, goat or several dozen other species) lives or is processed to be identified by name of owner, address, phone number, Global Positioning Satellite coordinates and a 7-digit premises ID number in a central registry.

2) Each animal would be assigned a unique 15 digit federal ID number and a tag – most likely an implanted radio-frequency identification device (RFID) which can be read at a distance. In cases where livestock are kept and moved as a group throughout their entire life cycle, producers would be allowed to assign an ID number to the group rather than to each individual animal. The idea of using DNA or retinal scans as sources of unique identification has also been discussed.

3) Data on each animal’s birth, movements on or off any premises, tagging events (application, loss, replacement) and slaughter would be compiled and regularly updated in a database which could tell where and when each animal was born, who bought it, where they took it, when it saw a vet, and where it went for slaughter.

Third parties, such as veterinarians, would be required to report “sightings” of animals without RFID tags or otherwise in violation of the NAIS.

What Problems is Tracking Supposed to Solve?

In recent years a number of animal diseases have become human health concerns. Such diseases include avian influenza, mad cow (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or BSE) and food borne illnesses. The USDA and some industry organizations are saying that they need animal tracking to contain animal diseases.

Avian Influenza (AI) has been endemic for centuries but only rarely poses any serious health consequences for birds, and less still for humans. Only since 1997 has the H5N1 subtype of the virus mutated into a form that can, with difficulty, infect humans. The worst outbreaks of this subtype occurred in Southeast Asia in 2003. So far it has killed 111 people – mostly agricultural workers and people who live near infected poultry. By some estimates it has killed or prompted the culling of over 200 million chickens. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) the spread of AI may have been facilitated by the rapid scale-up and concentration of poultry and pig operations in China and Southeast Asia. Currently AI is not very infectious to humans (one has to be exposed to infected poultry for long periods) but, like any virus, it can mutate to a more infectious form given the proper conditions.

Mad Cow (BSE) appears to have emerged in the 1980’s in the feed processing plants of England. As a way of getting cheap protein for rapid weight gain, some feedlots added to their cattle feed small bits and pieces of animal tissue which were discarded during processing. Scientists suspect that BSE emerged when sheep infected with scrapie, a disease similar to mad cow, were fed to cattle that were in turn rendered and fed back to other cattle. Scrapie in sheep, BSE in cattle, and chronic wasting disease in elk and deer are all caused by prions, rogue proteins that make their way into the brain and poke it with holes, destroying normal cells and causing animals to stumble, show aggression, and eventually die. The prions stay active after slaughter and can spread to humans who eat affected meat. BSE has been found in cattle in at least 30 countries. Officials estimate that the related disease transmitted to humans has killed at least 150 people in Great Britain.

Food Borne Illness, such as Salmonella or E. coli O157:H7, is spread by contaminated meat or animal products. Salmonella may result in deaths from acute Salmonellosis in around 600 people a year, whereas E. coli O157:H7 is implicated in about 60 deaths per year in the U.S. One can avoid harm from these diseases by reasonable home sanitation and thoroughly cooking food.

Where Do These Emerging Diseases Come From?

Humans and animals have evolved (and continue to evolve) along with bacteria, viruses, and other disease-causing agents. Animals have developed complicated immune systems that identify, isolate, and attack disease agents. If new forms of a disease develop for which our immune systems are not prepared, there is a period during which we are susceptible to serious illness and even death. But eventually immune systems learn how to identify and counter the new agent, neutralizing it as serious threat. The primary public health challenge, therefore, is to minimize the chances of new diseases evolving.

Fortunately, we know a lot about what conditions encourage rapid transmission and evolution of disease agents – environments that are warm and moist, crowded with many genetically similar hosts, and devoid of sunlight and fresh air. Unfortunately, massive meat conglomerates have been creating these very conditions at breakneck speed all around the globe. In the last 50 years, in the name of cheaper food, these factory farms have industrialized and concentrated the world’s livestock, taking them from millions of backyards and small farms and enclosing them in giant facilities operated for maximum production. Oklahoma’s Texas County, for instance, in 1990 had 11,000 hogs. Today it has more than a million. Five percent of our farms now raise the majority of our beef. Corporations produce 98% of all U.S. poultry. Some Chinese factory farms raise 5 million chickens at a time.

The blowback from these historically unprecedented developments in animal husbandry is now becoming clear. In low-density, dispersed populations, such as flocks of wild birds or backyard chickens, the viruses that tend to survive are the ones that remain low-pathogenic. If a virus mutates into a highly pathogenic form in these circumstances, it quickly kills all available hosts and then dies out. Following up on reports of a die-off of wild birds due to H5N1 at Erkhel Lake in Mongolia, veterinarians found that only one sample turned out positive for the virus. Researcher Dr. William Karesh commented that the virus “…had a very low impact… The disease is self-limiting in wild birds.” The highly concentrated environment of factory farms, however, provides perfect conditions for a virus to mutate from a low pathogenic to a high pathogenic form. Thousands of hosts (chickens) with near identical genetic makeup, all the same age and size, crowded in close conditions, allow a virus to kill its host and move onto the next victim with great speed and ease.

A consensus is emerging among scientists, ecologists and human health experts that H5N1 avian flu, as well as diseases such as monkey pox, HIV/Aids, West Nile virus, Ebola, Sars, BSE and Lyme disease may be emerging in animals and crossing more easily to humans because of environmental changes taking place and a global trade in confined livestock animals and their products. We have created ideal conditions for breeding new diseases and placed the host animals under conditions of such overcrowding and stress that their own immune systems can’t adequately protect them. As Gerhard Wagner, an officer of the FAO based in Thailand, puts it: “Intensive industrial farming of livestock is now an opportunity for emerging diseases.” Canadian virologist Earl Brown, a specialist in the evolution of influenza viruses, agrees: “You have to say that high intensity chicken rearing is a perfect environment for generating virulent avian flu virus.”

Are Factory Animal Farms Here to Stay?

This dangerous state of affairs is not only creating major health and environmental problems, it is also threatening its own continued existence. The factory farms that industry has thrown up around the globe are now facing their own lack of sustainability.

Manure Disposal – Factory farms could not exist without chemical fertilizer, which has allowed for a previously unimaginable uncoupling of livestock and crops. Millions of animals in one place can produce tens of millions of pounds of manure a day. Moving that manure promptly to where it might usefully fertilize fields is difficult and prohibitively expensive. Instead, it is contained for months in lagoons and some is volatilized into the air. A 1995 hog manure spill in North Carolina killed 10 million fish and closed 364,000 acres of coastal shellfish beds. Children in the San Joachim Valley’s factory dairy belt have asthma rates three times the national average. The American Public Health Association has urged a moratorium on all new concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) until a comprehensive health assessment can be conducted of them. North Carolina State University professor C. M. Williams, an expert on treating hog manure, says simply: “I do not feel that system [factory hog production] is long-term sustainable.”

Water Consumption – To produce a pound of beef under factory conditions can require an astonishing 1350 gallons of water. In many cases this water comes from underground reservoirs (like the Midwest’s Ogallala aquifer) which are rapidly dropping to levels that make pumping costs exorbitant. Former National Academy of Sciences director Dr. Charles Benbrook says that further expansion of factory dairy farms “doesn’t make sense and is patently unsustainable because water will become too costly…”

Antibiotic Use – Factory animal operations routinely administer low levels of antibiotics in the animal’s feed to promote growth. Over two-thirds of the antibiotics used in the US each year are for non-therapeutic use in animal feed. This is unsustainable because such overuse is rapidly leading to antibiotic resistance in livestock. Worse, many in the medical profession have become alarmed over the explosion of antibiotic resistance in humans that results from this practice. When we eat such meat the resistant bacteria are transferred to our own digestive tracts and pass that resistance along, making many antibiotics useless in fighting human infections.

Genetic Uniformity – As animals are bred for maximum weight gain under factory conditions, competitive economic pressures force the abandonment of traditional, slower growing breeds. But genetic diversity has long been a component of true food security. When conditions change, old breeds may have the needed traits to survive that have been bred out of newer varieties. There are reports, for instance, of native Asian chickens surviving the H5N1 virus that has been so fatal to Western breeds. Over the last 100 years some 1000 breeds of livestock have gone extinct. The problem is greatest in industrial countries, but is accelerating in developing countries as they adopt western production systems.

Energy Use – Animal confinement systems rely upon fossil fuel energy to provide feed, water, ventilation, manure removal, animal movement, and other essential services. A pastured setting, however, provides these to animals through its own ecological networks rather than by energy inputs from afar. Considering the energy used to produce and run machinery, to produce inorganic fertilizer, to dry crops, and to ventilate and heat buildings, a ton of pasture fodder requires less than 2% of the fossil fuel energy used to produce a ton of feed concentrate. As fossil fuel energy becomes more and more expensive, confinement systems will find it harder to stay competitive.

Anita Poole, of Oklahoma’s Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture, puts it this way: “The factory system of food production will simply implode.”

Why Won’t Tracking Work to Solve Disease Threats?

Tracking is a false solution to a real problem. Like food irradiation or routine use of antibiotics in animal feed, it is an attempt to paper-over the need for a fundamental change in the way factory farms raise and process livestock animals. So long as we try to address the symptoms rather than the cause of the problem, we will prolong its life.

In the case of avian flu, factory farmed poultry live in flocks that are maintained together for the life of the birds. If an outbreak of avian flu occurs, the whole flock is killed and burned and the poultry house sterilized. Nearby flocks are also typically culled. The locations of these flocks are well known and it is not clear what new information a tracking system would add.

In the case of mad cow, the disease is not discovered until the animal is slaughtered and tissue samples sent to a lab. The modest usefulness of a tracking system to identify possible herd mates who might have been similarly exposed to tainted feed years ago pales in comparison to the far simpler alternative of testing every cow for BSE upon slaughter, before the meat reaches the market, as is done in Europe and Japan. The test is easy, reliable, and cheap. Why our government has not adopted such routine testing of beef mystifies our foreign customers.

In the case of food-borne illnesses, meat contamination usually occurs during high speed processing at a slaughterhouse. This is after the animal is dead and tracking has ceased. Current food safety measures identifying meat by lot number as it moves to market, and normal care in sanitation and food preparation, are more useful than identifying where the affected animal came from.

NAIS Would Hurt Small Farmers

The most immediate impact of mandating NAIS would be to put some small farmers out of business.

Cost: No one knows how much such a tracking system will cost, but the purchase of tags, reporting software, and the time involved in setting up and maintaining a 24/7 reporting system for small farmers with only a few animals would likely be significant. Moreover, models proposed to date indicate that farmers eventually will be charged fees for registrations and for reporting events to databases. For many it will simply be the last straw.

Pressure to confine animals: The FAO and various foreign governments have reacted prematurely and somewhat hysterically to outbreaks of avian flu by concluding that migratory birds are spreading the virus. Unfortunately, some governments have gone so far as to outlaw backyard poultry. Animal tracking would identify and record premises where animals are still raised on pasture, and would give nervous public health officials an obvious, although misplaced, target. The evidence that wild birds play a primary role in the transmission of avian flu is scant at best, and far better evidence suggests that the spread is connected to shipments of live birds and poultry manure from factory farms via rail and truck routes. In Southeast Asia the country least affected by bird flu is Laos, where 90% of poultry is still produced by peasants in small, pastured flocks. Nevertheless, numerous countries have outlawed the outdoor raising of poultry, making it impossible for many small farmers in developing countries to have backyard birds for meat, eggs, and fertilizer. Backyard poultry provide both food security and farming income for hundreds of millions of rural poor in developing countries, as well as a third of the protein intake for the average rural household.

Religious Objections: Many religious groups in this country believe in raising animals for their own food as well as for manure, farm traction and transportation. Yet their beliefs forbid them to register or comply with an electronic, technology-dependent monitoring system.

Bureaucracy and Privacy Objections: Many people keep animals as a lifestyle choice rather than a business. For some of these, registering and monitoring requirements seem intrusive and out of keeping with the traditional life style they are seeking.

NAIS Would Hurt Consumers

Animal tracking would hurt consumers by limiting alternatives and further monopolizing the food economy.

Loss of Alternatives: Many consumers now seek out local, small scale, and organic food because they believe it is raised in a more healthy fashion. To the extent that suppliers of this food are driven from business by the costs of mandatory animal tracking or the accompanying pressure to abandon pastured flocks, consumers will have only the mass-produced factory-farmed food left to buy. Samuel Jutzi, director of Animal Production and Health for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) puts it this way: “This [more natural] type of production will become very marginal. High quality poultry, raised in the open air and grain-fed, will become a niche product.”

Further Concentration of Food Industry: Big poultry companies are actively using fear about avian flu to further their efforts to “restructure” the poultry industry and do away with small-scale producers. Margaret Say, Southeast Asian director of the USA Poultry and Egg Export Council openly admits it is her goal to “close down as many backyard farms as possible.” With fewer producers, those companies remaining are closer to monopoly control – which is always a bad thing for consumers.

NAIS Would Hurt Organic Farmers

Organic farmers believe that the presence of soil, with its millions of competing microbes, plus sunlight, fresh air and water are vital to raising healthy animals. National Organic Standards call for all animals to be raised with access to the out-of-doors. If animal tracking were to be implemented and farmers pressured into confining their animals, it would make organic livestock production impossible.

What Can I Do to Help?

As a livestock owner, you should not participate in any so-called “voluntary” state or federal program to register farms or animals. The USDA is using farmers’ supposed willingness to enter such voluntary programs as a justification for making the program mandatory. If a state or extension official urges registration of your premises or livestock you should request to see the person’s ID, ask whether registration is mandatory, about any deadline, and ask for a copy of the legislation or other rule authorizing such a requirement. Let NOFA/Mass know about the visit so we can alert others. Also, contact your breed association, organic or sustainable or other farming interest group and ask them to oppose NAIS. Also ask them to write to officials commenting on the program. Many livestock industry groups have been supporting the program, but that could diminish as opposition builds and the program’s many flaws become more apparent. Finally, if the time comes when the program is going into effect and you feel your rights are being violated, you can contact groups which may provide legal representation without cost. Some sources of information to try are: (1) Farmers’ Legal Action Group, www.flaginc.org, 651-223-5400; (2) the American Civil Liberties Union, www.aclu.org; for the ACLU in your state, see the pull-down menu on the bottom of that page, under “your local ACLU”; (3) Organizations defending religious freedom, such as The Becket Fund, www.becketfund.org, 202-955-0095, and The Rutherford Institute, www.rutherford.org, 434-978-3888; and (4) www.abanet.org/legalservices/findlegalhelp/home.cfm, the American Bar Association’s guide to legal services.

As an individual, you can educate your neighbors by asking NOFA/Mass for a speaker on NAIS to your group or by writing a letter to your local paper and contacting state and federal legislators to express your opinion on this program. You can find contact information for officials through www.vote-smart.org or through the federal government’s site www.firstgov.gov. Personal letters, Emails and phone calls all work. Stay tuned to our website www.nofamass.org for updates on how the program is developing and other ways to get involved.

As a consumer you can patronize farmers who raise meat, milk and eggs in a way you support. Talk to the farmer, ask questions, tell him or her what you like and don’t like about those practices. The strength of local farming is that such feedback is possible and can be acted upon immediately. For those seeking organic sources, NOFA/Mass publishes an Organic Food Guide and lists organic producers on our website at www.nofamass.org.

Donate to help us print more literature, and distribute literature to your farm or garden store or library.

Join NOFA/Mass to learn more about organic growing in the Northeast and to help the cause! Membership information is below: Annual Dues: Individual $30, Family $40. Supporting $100, Low-Income $20 Contact: Membership, 411 Sheldon Road, Barre, MA 01005, (978) 355-2853, or email: info@nofamassorg NOFA/Mass NAIS Response Coordinator, Ben Grosscup, 413-658-5374, or email: ben.grosscup@nofamass.org

References on Avian Influenza, The NAIS, and Sustainable Agriculture

NOTE: The arrangement of the references contained herein is meant merely as an educational tool for people to better understand the issues around Avian Influenza, the National Animal Identification System, factory farms, and sustainable agriculture. The inclusion of any one source in no way necessarily means that NOFA/Mass endorses the point of view referenced.

1. Reports, Articles, and Position Statements on The National Animal Identification System:

Article: National Animal ID Program Backstops Agribusiness While Small-Farm System Offers Real Disease Answers By Ben Grosscup, NOFA/Mass, March 2006. (An article by NOFA/Mass NAIS Response Coordinator, Ben Grosscup on why NAIS promotes an unsustainable system of agriculture.)

Position Statement: Comments on NAIS "Draft Program Standards" and "Draft Strategic Plan" By Mary Zanoni, Farm for Life, Feb 6, 2006. (A leading voice for a sustainable agriculture message on NAIS.)

Position Statement: Analysis of the NAIS and Proposed Texas Regulations By Judith McGeary, Texas Farmers and Gardeners Association (TOFGA), March 27, 2006. (An excellent critique of the proposed Texas version of NAIS that emphasizes the program's legal and constitutional problems.)

Position Statement: The National Animal Identification System and the Proposed Texas Regulations By TOFGA, 3-27-06. (A much shorter version of the above analysis)

Article: Old Big Brother Had a Farm By Amanda Griscom Little, Grist Magazine, 3-10-06. (An environmental reporter's synopsis of the current debate on NAIS)

Position Statement: R-CALF USA 2006 Position Paper: National Animal Identification System By Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF) (R-CALF Raises questions about how the current program is being implemented such as the privatization of the NAIS database and the neglect of existing animal identification systems.)

Position Statement: By Brad Bellinger, Vice Chairman, Australian Beef Association (ABA), Update No. 19, March 2006. (The ABA is an organization of Australian beef producers that is allied with R-CALF USA. Here it lays out its critique of the "National Livestock Identification System," which has already been made mandatory in Australia and is quite similar to the proposed NAIS in the United States.)

Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID By Katherine Albrect and Liz McIntyre, 2005. (This site the companion site to a book on the emerging surveillance technology of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). While the USDA wants to require RFID tags for livestock animals through the NAIS, major corporations like IBM, Gillette, and many others want to put them in every consumer good, and even in people.)

2. Reports, Fact Sheets, and Books on Pastured Poultry and Avian Influenza:

Report: Fowl play: The Poultry Industry's Central Role in the Bird Flu Crisis By Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN), February 2006. (Puts recent bird flu events globally in political, economic, and scientific context.)

Report: The top-down global response to bird flu By GRAIN, April 2006. (Governments around the world are pursuing ill-informed and top-down strategies to combat bird flu. Strategies need to change to reflect the needs and knowledge ofsmall farmers).

Report: Dead Birds Don’t Fly: An Avian Flu Primer for Small-Scale Farmers By Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), March 2006. (Clear explanation of the biology of bird flu, and practical ways to protect small flocks without resorting to confinement poultry production.)

Fact Sheet: Control Bird Flu by Controlling Intensive Poultry Operations By Beyond Factory Farming Coalition, Canada. (A Canadian farmers' rights group's leaflet on factory farm hazards.)

Book: The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu By Mike Davis. 9-15-2005. (A book on the imminent public health danger of bird flu, which has arisen from factory farms.

3. Perspectives on how Factory Farms and Wild Birds Affect Bird Flu:

Report: BirdLife Statement on Avian Influenza By Bird Life International, 4-11-06. (BirdLife International, which is a bird conservation organization, comprehensively analyzes recent outbreaks of H5N1 bird flu in wild birds and argues that their role in spreading the virus to domestic flocks has been largely overblown.)

Report: Fish farming and the risk of spread of avian influenza by Prof C J Feare, Wild Wings Management, and BirdLife International, March 2006. (This article explains how the total lack of regulation of poultry and poultry products in integrated agriculture-aquaculture operations in SE Asia is contributing to the spread of AI.)

Article: The price of cheap chicken is bird flu By Wendy Orent, LA Times, 3-12-06. (How global trends toward factory farming threaten small farmers and public health.)

Article: Poultry business too serious to be left to industry By Sunita Narain, Down To Earth, India, 3-15-06. (An editorial that puts the onus for animal disease threats on the growing poultry industry.)

Article: Flying in the face of nature By John Vidal, The Guardian, UK, 2-22-06. (Why experts agree that large-scale animal farming is a primary factor in spreading new diseases.)

Article: Wild Claims about Avian Flu By Grant Sheppard, The Tyee, Canada. 3-29-06. (Analysis of how media have hyped wild bird threat without clear evidence.)

Article: Coming Home to Roost: Bird Flu, a Virus of Our Own Hatching By Michael Greger, M.D. 2004. (A summary of how factory farms can cause benign viral strains to become extremely virulent. Michael Gregor is also coming out with a full-length book titled, Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching in Summer 2006. It will provide extensive documentation of how animal concentration in factory farms is exacerbating threats of zoonotic diseases -- animal diseases that can be transmitted to humans.)

Press Release: High geographic concentration of animals may have favoured the spread of avian flu: Around 25 million birds culled - international assistance needed By FAO Bangkok, 1-28-04. (In contrast to many recent statements from FAO blaming the spread of H5N1 on small farmers, they came out with a press release at the beginning on 2004 with a statement that pointed toward the role of big industrial animal operations)

Article: Avian influenza goes global, but don't blame the birds The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 2006;6:185. (A prestigious medical journal in England adds its voice to the growing consensus that factory farms are exacerbating the bird flu crisis, and that what's getting in the way of policy makers realizing this is that it implicates the practices of some companies and governments.)

Article: Poultry Flu - Factory farms in Asia blamed for pandemic By Jonathan Brown, The Independent Online, 4-8-06. original: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article356440.ece

Article: From the Chickens' Perspective, the Sky Really Is Falling By Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times, 3-28-06. (This article explains that wild Birds are just the natural reservoir of the bird flu, but not a significant vector of the disease. The most important factor in understanding how the disease mutates and thereby poses serious health threats is the conditions in which it evolves.)

Article: Bird Flu Virus May Be Spread by Smuggling By Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times, 4-15-06. (New doubts are cast upon the "Wild Bird" Theory of H5N1 transmission as the role of trade and smuggling, which are routine features of the global poultry economy, become clear.)

4. Regulatory Threats to Pastured Poultry

Article: All cooped up: Bird flu scare prompts Quebec to ban free-range bird farming By Kristian Gravenor, Montreal Mirror, Quebec, 1-19-06. (For the first time in Canada or the States, Quebec farm authorities have banned free-range bird farm techniques in the province.)

Article: All poultry may have to be moved indoors By David Derbyshire and Charles Clover, The Telegraph, England, 7-04-06. (In the UK, government officials are considering requiring poultry to be kept indoors. The article states that birds kepts indoors are safer because they go through the production process so quickly while birds kept outdoors are more vulnerable.)

Article: Bird Flu in India : Whose chickens are they anyway? By Joseph Keve 2-26-06. Die Wochen Zeitung (Zurich) (Factory farm expansion has led to reduced poultry biodiversity, which makes the animals more vulnerable to the current pandemic of influenza in birds.) http://www.woz.ch/artikel/rss/13021.html (in German)

Article: The flu that made agribusiness stronger By Isabelle Delforge, Focus on the Global South, Bangkok, 7-5-04. (As small farmers in Southeast Asia drop out of production, the market share of multinational meat conglomerates like the Thailand-based Charoen Pokphand Group, which models the massive scale and centralized control of the U.S.-based Tyson Foods, expands.)

5. Reports on General Health Problems with Factory Farming:

Report: Industrial animal agriculture – the next global health crisis? By Danielle Nierenberg, Worldwatch Institute and Leah Garcés, World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), 2004. (A review of factory farms and zoonotic diseases.)

Report: Happier Meals: Rethinking the Global Meat Industry By Danielle Nierenberg, Worldwatch Paper 171, Worldwatch Institute, September 2005. (Analysis of factory farming's deleterious environmental and health impacts.)

6. Articles, Blogs, and Press Releases on Pet Animal ID Chipping

Blog: New Jersey Raises Privacy Concerns & Eyebrows -Task Force Wants Country's First Pet (Owner) Database 7-26-05. (Dogpolitics.com is a blog that among many other topics tracks the issue of using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips in pets and especially dogs.)

Blog: The PAWS Bill - Show Me The Money, Microchips and Political Power 9-22-05.

Blog: The PAWS Bill PART II - Money, Microchips & Big Brother 10-6-05.

Blog: NAIS - U.S. Govt Mandates Mass Animal Surveillance By 2008 1-9-06. (Report that neither the USDA nor the Senate Ag Committee would rule out inclusion of dogs, cats or bunnies in the NAIS)

7. Public Events and Displays of Opposition to NAIS

Premises ID proposal draws critical crowd in Montpelier By Jedd Kettler, County Courier, Vermont, 4-13-06. (Vermont Ag Secretary Steve Kerr has been trying to separate premises registration from animal tracking, but farmers are rejecting this spurious point, and vowing non-compliance.)

Big Brother on the animal farm? Animal ID system raises Orwellian concerns for some By Jedd Kettler, County Courier, 4-13-06. (Article contains strong statements of opposition from Vermont Farmers to implementation of the National Animal Identification System as proposed.)

Hay Raised Over Livestock Tracking By James Straub, The Elsworth American, Maine, 3-16-06. (Tells how many farmers are voicing their opposition to the proposed implemtation of NAIS in Maine.)

To get involved with the ongoing work of NOFA/Mass on NAIS, contact Ben Grosscup, ben.grosscup@nofamass.org, 413 658-5374.

This page was last modified on January 20, 2008 at 9:13:04 AM.