A little review to start with. What is the purpose of <acronym title="National Animal Identification System">NAIS</acronym> and how is it going to be accomplished and who is the lead agency in it's implementation?<br />n<br />n<acronym title="National Animal Identification System">NAIS</acronym> is a program by the <acronym title="United States Department of Agriculture, Bought and Paid for by The Big Meat Packers">USDA</acronym> to allow them to track every animal in the US from birth to death. This is going to be done in cattle by means of an ear tag which even without the RFID technology will allow the <acronym title="United States Department of Agriculture, Bought and Paid for by The Big Meat Packers">USDA</acronym> to figure out where a particular animal has been from the time of it's birth.<br />n<br />nWhy do I bring this up? I bring this up because of a little story about a South Dakota farmer and <a href="http://www.farmandranchguide.com/articles/2007/01/12/ag_news/livestock_news/live09.txt">his experience</a> with tagged cattle. It appears this farmer went to an auction yard and bought a bunch of calves to feed on his farm. He fed the calves until they were fat and then took them to the slaughter house for his pay day. He was in for a surprise though.<br />n<br />nThe packing plant would not pay him for seven head of his cattle and condemned the whole load of offal. Why? Because the seven head in question were Canadian cattle and were not supposed to be in this farmers possession.<br />n<br />n<blockquote>"Unfortunately, it appears that <acronym title="United States Department of Agriculture, Bought and Paid for by The Big Meat Packers">USDA</acronym> is not keeping track of the cattle being imported from Canada – under <acronym title="United States Department of Agriculture, Bought and Paid for by The Big Meat Packers">USDA</acronym>'s rules, these calves should never have been allowed to be sold in a South Dakota auction market. The Canadian officials apparently haven't been able to trace back the movements and origin of the calves, despite the official Canadian tags found in their ears." Fox said that <acronym title="United States Department of Agriculture, Bought and Paid for by The Big Meat Packers">USDA</acronym> implemented a rule in 2005 to allow the importation of Canadian feeder cattle under 30 months of age, but only under very strict conditions.<br />n <br />n<br />n"The cattle are supposed to enter the U.S. in sealed trucks and be transported directly to an identified feedlot. They are then to remain in the identified feedlot until they are hauled to a slaughter plant in a sealed truck," he said. "The fact that these calves showed up at a salebarn in South Dakota, were allowed to intermingle with U.S. cattle, and were not represented as Canadian cattle, indicates that <acronym title="United States Department of Agriculture, Bought and Paid for by The Big Meat Packers">USDA</acronym> is not monitoring the very system it created.</blockquote><br />n<br />nThe <acronym title="United States Department of Agriculture, Bought and Paid for by The Big Meat Packers">USDA</acronym> wants to track all the cattle in the US, around 100 million cattle, and they can't even keep track of the small amount of cattle, I'm sure no more than 10 million, which come into the country from Canada. This is the perfect example of why <acronym title="National Animal Identification System">NAIS</acronym> is not going to work. The whole integrity of the program depends on the <acronym title="United States Department of Agriculture, Bought and Paid for by The Big Meat Packers">USDA</acronym> being able to track these critters and here they prove on a smaller scale that they are incapable of doing just this.<br />n<br />nRemember this example when the <acronym title="United States Department of Agriculture, Bought and Paid for by The Big Meat Packers">USDA</acronym> official show up on your doorstep to sign you up for <acronym title="National Animal Identification System">NAIS</acronym>. Point out their proven inability to track cattle in the market system. See what they have to say about it. I bet they don't have an answer for you.<br />n<br />n<strong>Doubts raced through my mind as I considered the feasibility of enforcing a law which the majority of honest citizens didn't seem to want. Eliot Ness</strong><br />n<br />nCross-posted to <a href="http://noanimalid.com">No Mandatory Animal ID</a>