September 17, 2008: FARFA joined with fifty-four other organizations to send a letter to Congress opposing funding for NAIS and asking Congress to keep NAIS out of any food safety bills.  Read more here

Help us spread the word!  Download this press release and send it to your local newspaper and radio stations! 

Older News:    

Good news from the Senate Appropriations Committee!

The Senate Appropriations Committee's report has been released, and it does not include the provision linking the School Lunch program to NAIS, or any other provision for mandatory NAIS, as far as we can tell! 
 
The Committee did include some funding for NAIS: approximately $9.8 million for NAIS itself and $3.2 million for related programs (WLIC, FAIR, and RFID research).  Although we would have liked to see all funding stopped, this is still a significant improvement over last year's Senate recommendation of approximately $24 million for NAIS and NAIS-related programs!
 
Thank you to all those who called their Senators and made their voices heard!

July 2008: 81 organizations, including FARFA, signed a letter to the House Appropriations Committee asking them not to link NAIS to the School Lunch Program. 

US Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), chairwoman of the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, has inserted pro-NAIS provisions into the Agriculture Appropriations bill for 2009.  According to her press release, the bill would require USDA to purchase meat products for the School Lunch Program from livestock premises registered with National Animal Identification System beginning in July 2009.  This is a back-door method for mandating NAIS through the power of the purse strings.  The bill also provides a total NAIS funding level of $14.5 million or about $4.8 million above 2008.  The House Agriculture Appropriations bill is stuck in Committee and is not expected to move ahead in 2008.

Talking Points

In addition to the message above, here are some more talking points about why the NAIS provisions in the Agriculture Appropriations bill should be taken out.  Pick one or two to focus on, and put them in your own words!
 
*  This bill uses the government's power to economically coerce farmers into NAIS. That is not a "voluntary" program.

*  This bill throws good money after bad, supporting a program that is not sound economically or scientifically. 
    *  USDA has presented no science to back up its claims that NAIS will address livestock diseases.
    *  The USDA has never completed a cost/benefit analysis to show that NAIS is worthwhile.
    *  NAIS will not improve food safety.  The massive Hallmark/Westland beef recall this past year was caused by the slaughterhouse employees' failure to follow existing regulations for handling "downer" cows.  Mandating NAIS on cattle producers will not make anybody obey the laws we already have.
    *  NAIS will not help Americans compete in the world market.  If it is mandatory, or even adopted by most producers, those who participate will not get premiums for their meat.

*  Pouring more money into the program is a waste of precious tax dollars that could be better spent on safety inspections at packing and processing plants, where most food contamination occurs.
 
* Using the school lunch program to force farmers into NAIS undermines the growing farm-to-school program, which helps children get fresh, local, and sustainably raised foods.  Local farmers should not be forced into an unpopular program that has nothing to do with food quality or safety in order to provide food for our children.
 
*  The claim that USDA has achieved 33% of its Premises Registration goal is wrong.  USDA computes its percentage of premises registered based on farmers who answer the agriculture census.  Hundreds of thousands of additional horse owners, families with a few chickens, suburbanites with a pet pot-bellied pig, and others like them are technically covered by NAIS, but USDA ignores them when it reports its supposed successes to Congress.  The vast majority of people who will be impacted by NAIS either oppose it or are still unaware of it!
 
* NAIS has never been specifically approved by Congress.  This massive program, which will impact millions of people, should be addressed through full and open debate, not snuck in through appropriations.

More Information

DeLauro's press release is posted at: http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/DeLauroSubMarkup06-19-08.pdf  See pages 6-7 for discussion of the NAIS provisions in the bill.
 
DeLauro has supported tracking farms for some time.  Her food safety bill from 2007 included tracking all food from its origin to consumer's plates.  Her press release on the school lunch initiative states, "We will also strengthen Animal ID and the National School Lunch Program including language to provide market-based incentives to strengthen both the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) and the National School Lunch Program."
 
The press release makes it clear that DeLauro supports moving the entire NAIS program forward: "The bill's report details specific implementation milestones to shine the spotlight on APHIS's delivery of NAIS.  The Committee worked in consultation with the agency, and we largely derived these performance measures from the agency's own NAIS business plan.  We are going to move well beyond tracking the number of premises registered and follow more closely how APHIS is using the money. The NAIS milestones include (1) 48-hour traceability standards for specific species; and (2) program administration deliverables."

The actual bill language is not yet available.  We will send a follow up alert when it is.

This is going to be another hard fight to win.  Several key committee members in both the House and the Senate support a mandatory NAIS, and will be glad for anything that moves us towards that.  So we need everyone to call!  Tell your friends and neighbors what is happening, and ask them to call also.
 
Let your voice be heard!

Judith McGeary
Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance
www.farmandranchfreedom.org
866-687-6452