Greetings all!  We have lots of good news.

First, Harrison County has joined the City of Marshall in adopting a resolution opposing NAIS.  FARFA has been working closely with Mayor Smith of the City of Marshall on this issue.  Coming from a ranching family and as someone who owns Paso Fino horses, he understands the problems that NAIS will create for animal owners and has been strongly opposed to NAIS from the beginning. I do not have a signed copy of the resolutions yet, but my understanding from him is that they are almost identical to the one I sent out to FARFA's mailing list a few weeks ago.  The City and County noted that they have a direct interest in the issue, because they own and manage an arena for public events, which will be impacted by NAIS.  You can find FARFA's proposed resolution, and a document that supports each and every "whereas" in it, at http://www.farmandranchfreedom.org/action.html  Ask your city and county to follow Marshall's and Harrison's lead!

Representative Rose has introduced HB 168, which would completely repeal HB 1361.  You can find the text at http://www.texasanimalhealthcommissionwatch.com/HB1361.pdf   Special Session is nearing its close, but there is still time to call the Governor and ask for this issue to be heard.  Even if he refuses, Representative Rose's bill shows how much support we have been gaining in the Legislature.  Governor Perry cannot stop the issue from being addressed in the regular session!

The Equine Expo in Ft Worth went great.  Many thanks to Sarah Legvold, Paul Allen and Vera Kirby, and Liz Kincaid for their hard work and donations!  Aaron England, a natural horsemanship clinician, agreed to act as the spokesperson on the commercial that will be aired on RFD-TV this August/September, and it will be a powerful wake-up call to the people who remain unaware of NAIS.

The TAHC continues to push NAIS.  The agency took no action at its May 4th meeting, but Dr. Hillman stressed how important the program is.  Amusingly, while they have only received 12,000 premises registrations, they are already 2 months behind in issuing premises numbers!  What do they think they will do if they require hundreds of thousands of people to register?  Perhaps expand the government bureacracy more and more and more?  On behalf of FARFA, I provided public comment at the end of the meeting on two issues: (1) the agency needs to stop simply pushing its agenda, and actually listen to why people are opposed to the program, and (2) the agency needs to spend some of those federal dollars to stop its agents, such as the Texas Extension Service, from misleading people.  I don't expect the TAHC to be responsive until and unless they are ordered to by the Legislature, so we must keep up the pressure there.  The TAHC has issued an "information booklet" that contains incomplete and misleading information; we will be deevloping a response that tells the whole story soon.

Working together, we can make our voices heard!

Judith McGeary
Executive Director
Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance
www.farmandranchfreedom.org