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A Legal View of NAIS

PORKER

Well-known member
HOW do you AUDIT a package of COOL beef at US. Retail back to its origin which is from across the border?

CCIA can't do COOL.
 

MoGal

Well-known member
IF this has been posted elsewhere, sorry, but looks like they have another agenda in making this mandatory......

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http://www.txfb.org/NewsManager/templates/tfbnews.asp?articleid=2689&zoneid=1

Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) told reporters Thursday the massive ground beef recall sparked by video footage of abused downer cattle “shows the importance of having what he calls a ‘comprehensive’ animal ID system that covers all animals and provides 48-hour traceback to the farm or ranch,” the Brownfield Network reports.

While that statement “likely wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows, Harkin didn’t stop there. When pressed by reporters on the issue, Harkin wouldn’t rule out congressional action to make national animal ID mandatory.

"You know USDA could make it mandatory," Harkin noted. "Whether or not we’re going to do that in law, that remains to be seen."

Harkin also promised to hold hearings on national animal ID this spring and said such a program “wouldn’t cost that much, either.”
 

esbee

Member
This lawyer is right on the money but he did not cover the contract made by signing up for NAIS. Contract you say? What contract?
In the NAIS document those who own livestock are called "stakeholder"
and the land upon which the livestock presides is "premises". Contracts
use certain words for a reason. The lectric law library states that the
word premises signifies a formal part of a deed,and is made to designate an
estate; to designate is to name or entitle. Therefore a premises has no
protection under the United States constitution and has no exclusive rights
of the owner tied to it. Black's Law states 'premises' was a tenement or conveyance'. Stakeholder (the term the USDA is using to
identify us) refers to a third party who temporarily holds money or property
while its owner is still being determined.

By signing up for NAIS, title to property rights could be clouded, basically making the owner little more than a sharecropper.
 

esbee

Member
NAIS is trying to be a one-size-fits-all program yet there is a huge
difference between granny's back yard hens, a pot belly pig in suburbia,
horses which are not in the food chain and the multi-billion dollar
corporate ag and factory farms, which this program was ultimately made for.
(oh by the way, the factory farms get one lot number per groups of animals,
but granny has to microchip every animal she has and report their births,
deaths and off-property movements.)
 

esbee

Member
Let's say the government starts a special program to make soccer moms feel safe about protecting their kids from “all those diseases” because kids do carry and spread diseases and those germs are certainly on everything they touch.

First they register their homes with the government, and identify all soccer balls and game equipment by registering each piece with the government along with microchipping each item, heck, stick a chip in the kids, too.

Then file reports with the government after every soccer game and practice, scanning what equipment was used. The costs for chips, scanners and reports are borne by the individual families owning all this equipment.

Then use this “tracking” information to show the world that our professional big league soccer teams are disease-free and can travel to other countries to play soccer against other pro teams.

A rule in the program makes the pro teams equipment exempt from individual chipping and movement reports because “they have such a huge amount of equipment per team and they all go to the games together as a group.”

But if a kid sneezes, all soccer balls and game equipment that kid came near in a certain time period and within a 6 mile radius (140 sq. miles) is confiscated and destroyed, because it might have germs on it and could infect others.

This plan makes about as much sense as me reporting where I ride my horse so corporate ag can tell the world how safe our beef supply is from FMD or BSE!!!! But that is NAIS summed up in the nuttiest nutshell you will ever see!!!!
 

MoGal

Well-known member
I've posted on this quite a bit because it definitely is worrisome to me.... I really think there's a way to do NAIS without having to sign your property into a premise......... however I ran across this the other day....

full article here: http://www.newswithviews.com/guest_opinion/guest95.htm

I'm only pasting what I feel is most important, its a good read...

Zimbabwe’s Marxist dictator, Robert Mugabe, who has “nationalized” 95% of rural land and plunged what was once Africa’s leading food producing nation into chaos, put it bluntly: “Absolute power is when a man is starving and you are the only one able to give him food.”

(this is re the FMD outbreak in England a few years ago)
What caused the outbreak? Was it the “accidental result of testing genetically-engineered vaccines?” Or was it, as some claim, a UK government “dark-side,” bio-terrorism operation? The bio-warfare research lab at Porton Down was reportedly “missing” a vial of foot-and-mouth virus two months before the outbreak. The June 29, 2001, Evening Chronicle reported, “Government scientists in four countries were preparing for a foot and mouth outbreak months before it swept Britain.” Leaked papers from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency stated, “This exercise is the first of its kind and provides [Canada, the USA and Mexico] with a unique opportunity to apply their emergency response plans in the event of a real disease outbreak.” Simultaneously, the UK government coordinated its contingency plans. The UK’s 2002 official inquiry report asserted it is unlikely the outbreak’s origin “will ever be identified.”

Similarities between Porton Down and the UK’s 2001 foot-and-mouth epidemic, and Fort Dietrich/Dugway Proving Grounds and the 2001 US anthrax letter attacks raise disturbing questions. Contaminated US mail reached key Senators who suddenly changed their minds and voted for the USA Patriot Act. In both instances, investigations amounted to shams. In both instances, the consequences were less freedom and more centralized power in “free” nations.
snip.....
The Ukrainian Republic, a fertile land with a tradition of private property rights, was known as “the breadbasket of Europe.” During two years, 1932-1933, as many as 5 million Ukrainians died from famine, related disease, and genocidal murder as Stalin and his comrades forcibly collectivized Soviet agriculture.
.......Stalin desperately needed agricultural exports in order to finance the Soviet military-industrial empire, exploitation of agriculture was essential. Farmers could not be allowed to own property. Soviet agriculture would be industrialized.
----------Villages were surrounded and laid waste…Districts were stripped of their stocks of grain and seed, then cordoned off to die of famine and plague.”

All food and livestock were expropriated from the rural population. “Famine was quite deliberately employed as an instrument of national policy, as the last means of breaking the resistance of the peasantry to the new system where they are divorced from personal ownership of the land and obligated to work on the conditions which the state may demand from them...”—William H. Chamberlin, British correspondent.

While Ukraine starved to death, Stalin industrialized agriculture and exported its grain and butter.

As much as 50% of the rural population vanished, swept from the land into the gulag or the grave.

and of course by now you're thinking well this is Russia,..... that couldn't happen in the US.......please read on,
In 1934, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Rexford Tugwell declared, “[Our] future is becoming visible in Russia.” His plan: private agricultural land controlled “to whatever extent is found necessary for maintaining continuous productivity…We could probably raise all the farm products we need with half our present farmers.” The Constitution, he said, was archaic and would have to be radically overhauled to conform to the Soviet model, using “an enlarged and nationalized police power for enforcement.”

In September, 1995, Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program and former US Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, explained the plan at the UN’s 4th World Conference on Women held in Beijing, Red China. “Food is power,” she said. “We use it to change behavior. Some may call that bribery. We do not apologize.” Litvinov, too, had a plan: “Food is a weapon.”

Agriculture Commissar Johanns has a plan: “[NAIS] represents one of the largest systematic changes ever faced by the livestock industry…The plan we are releasing today will guide our efforts as we continue to work with our State and industry partners to implement a nationwide system.”

NCBA has a plan: “A dynamic and profitable beef industry, which concentrates resources around a unified plan...” AFBF has a plan: “We support the establishment and implementation of a mandatory national animal identification system…”

On January 30, 2004, Mr. Bush signed Homeland Security Presidential Directive-9, “to defend the agriculture and food system against terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies.” USDA’s Jeremy Stump, says, “It’s from farm to fork.” The order covers animals and crops—the entire food supply chain—and includes shared operations with the CIA. According to Stump, Homeland Security would be in overall charge of the agricultural response. White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said the initiative “crosses over agencies” and lets Homeland Security take charge of a “peacetime outbreak” of a major disease.

From farm to fork…they have a plan for us. Does the plan protect the rights and independence of farmers and ranchers? Does the plan ensure competitive, free markets and a safe, abundant food supply for America? No doubt the mayhem and corruption of the Katrina emergency response has been a reassuring example of how their plan will be carried out. Cradled in their benevolent and protective arms, America sleeps well.

There are things happening in this country that I never, ever thought I would see and like a 78 y/o man told me a month or so back, "he sure was glad he was going out of this world instead of just coming into it" .......... actually that's kind of pitiful because our country doesn't have to be that way...... but the UN has said that agriculture should be nationalized so that all can share.....
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Agriculture Commissar Johanns has a plan: “[NAIS] represents one of the largest systematic changes ever faced by the livestock industry…The plan we are releasing today will guide our efforts as we continue to work with our State and industry partners to implement a nationwide system.”

Notice Johanns is no longer in Washington.
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Court stops privacy for livestock database
By Mary Mosquera
Published on June 12, 2008

The Agriculture Department has suspended indefinitely the time until a database for its National Animal Identification System (NAIS) would become subject to Privacy Act safeguards.

USDA had planned to make the records confidential effective June 9 but announced the postponement in the Federal Register June 10.

The change was the result of a restraining order sought by freelance journalist Mary-Louise Zanoni against USDA in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. On June 4, the court ordered the department to suspend its effective date for applying Privacy Act safeguards to the records system, Agriculture Secretary Edward Schafer said in a notice dated June 6.


The dispute concerns access to files containing the names of farmers, ranchers and livestock companies. Data about their premises, locations and livestock movements are stored in the National Premises Information Repository, which is the initial step toward NAIS.

Zanoni filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the list of contacts in the database, but USDA said some of those records were not subject to disclosure under FOIA, according to the complaint. To keep the records available while she continues to fight for the right to access them, Zanoni filed for a temporary restraining order to prevent USDA from making the database a confidential system of records.

Zanoni is also challenging USDA’s authority to apply the Privacy Act to the database and other systems associated with NAIS, according to the complaint.

If the department designates the database a Privacy Act system of records, it would prevent public access to the information without authorization, a password and a PIN, USDA said in a Federal Register notice dated April 30. USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which is developing the voluntary animal ID program, would be able to share the data with federal and state officials during an incident or for investigations. In addition, individuals could ask whether the system contains information about them or their premises and obtain information about data pertaining to them. APHIS has received information for the database from the public and from businesses, USDA said.

When it is implemented, the system would help producers and animal health officials respond quickly and effectively to animal disease events, USDA said. The goal is to have the data necessary to trace all animals associated with a disease incident within 48 hours in order to limit its spread and reduce its effect..
 

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