The U.S. Department of Agriculture will announce Friday that it is dropping a controversial plan to track livestock.
The National Animal Identification System began as a voluntary program in which each animal on a farm would be tracked with a unique identification number and stored in a federal database. The Bush administration created the program in 2004 after a report of mad cow disease in 2003.
Government officials said the program would have made it easier to track disease outbreaks and isolate sick animals, but critics said the program imposed costly and onerous requirements on small farmers and feared that the government would eventually make it mandatory and use it to pry into farmers’ lives.
Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack, former governor of Iowa, held public meetings on the NAIS program in 2009 and heard stiff opposition.
“It was just overwhelming in the country that people didn’t like it, and I think they took that feedback to heart,” said Mary Kay Thatcher, public policy director of the American Farm Bureau Federation, which had opposed the identification system. “I think it’s good they’ve at least said we’re going to do something different.” — New York Times
The department still plans to create rules for livestock transported in interstate commerce, but will leave overall livestock tracking to the states.
["Oreo Cows" photo by Shea Hazarian; CC BY 2.0]
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Karl Marx would love the popular moves among politicians in various state governments and the federal government to ban so-called "junk" food in schools, and to "put healthy food in" convenience stores and on the tables of those they define as poor. It's a very elitist and arrogant mindset that promotes this ideology, and it needs to be addressed.
Ultimately, the war supporters in Congress prevailed in the vote on the resolution. Still, the vote was significant because it places every member of Congress on the record as supporting or not supporting the unconstitutional, costly, violent occupation of a country that never attacked us. This vote should serve as an important reminder to the American people of where their representatives really stand when it comes to policing the world, empire building, and war.
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Pat McCotter
Feb 05, 2010
Yeah!!!!!! Excellent news!!!
But we still need to reman vigilant!
Alex K.
Feb 06, 2010
What part of free-market do these guys not understand?! This is just another step towards full government regulation of our lives – starting with livestock and moving towards micro-chips in military, students, and eventually all households…
Josef Hlasny
Feb 07, 2010
The Bush administration proposed the federally run ID system after the discovery of the nation’s first case of mad cow disease (BSE) in 2003; that can (according to the infectious theory) afflict humans. USDA had spent more than $130 million without coming up with a workable system… However, BSE can be a naturally occurring disease, so not an infectious disease. WHY? Because, about the BSE disease; this was never justified scientifically! It was pure, math-model-driven science fiction. But it was pushed very vigorously by the British science establishment, which has never confessed to its errors… In addition, meat and bone meal (MBM) is a valuable raw material providing energy, protein, vitamins and minerals, which vary in levels, but that are very well digested by the animals…- see the recent article; Meat and bone meal back into feed; (January 12, 2010) and there also my comment about this article (www.allaboutfeed.net/weblog/from-feed-to-food/#comments). See also other relationships, according to my web www.bse-expert.cz and recent presentation at 29th World Veterinary Congress in Vancouver; Neurodegenerative Diseases and Schizophrenia as a Hyper or Hypofunction of the NMDA Receptors (www.bse-expert.cz/pdf/Veter_kongres.pdf).
Josef Hlasny, DVM, PhD, veterinary surgeon in Bludov, Czech Republic
Ben Gedalecia, Oakland, CA
Feb 09, 2010
This was another trial balloon, launched in order to measure the amount of resistance by the sheeple. This time there was enough of an uproar so that the fascists backed down. For now. Eternal vigilance IS the price of Liberty.
“Fall Empires, just don’t fall on me.” Jimi Hendrix
Pat McCotter
Feb 22, 2010
WSJ: U.S. Weighs How to Track Diseased Livestock