USDA Memo Mandates NAIS Premises Registration
But Agency and Big Ag Still Deny Their Plans
USCA President calls for unity on the issue...
2008 Karin Bergener at 330-298-0065
Judith McGeary at 512-243-9404
"The memo not only calls for mandatory registrations, but for branding individuals as 'dissenters,' notes Col. (Ret.) Randy Givens, a founder of the Liberty Ark Coalition (LAC), an alliance formed to fight NAIS. "The USDA's document states that people who refuse to 'voluntarily' register their property will not only be involuntarily assigned a registration number, but will also be assigned a special code that designates their refusal to 'volunteer.' "
Under NAIS, the premises registrations are gathered into a massive national database. Individual animals will each be tagged, using mostly microchip devices, and animal owners, even those with pets, will have to report to the government whenever they buy or sell animals, or animals die, or they take the animal off their property for events such as trail rides or shows. Most independent farmers and pet owners of livestock or horses have objected to the extensive costs and government intrusion of the system. Industrial agriculture operations, which will be able to avoid individual tagging by using group identification, support NAIS.
USDA's 2005 plan for NAIS called for it to become mandatory by 2009. However, in response to widespread protests by animal owners, USDA announced in 2007 that the program would be "voluntary at the federal level." That change in strategy moved implementation of the mandatory NAIS down to the states, allowing USDA to disclaim responsibility. Since then, many states have been using federal guidelines and funding, under Cooperative Agreements, to implement mandatory or coercive NAIS programs.
Given USDA's past actions in pushing NAIS despite objections, the memo was an unwelcome, but not surprising, development to animal owners and activists. "It's been clear to us for some time that USDA planned to use existing disease programs to register citizens' property," stated Karin Bergener, a horse owner and Steering Committee member of the LAC. According to Bergener, "At an industry conference last year, several state agriculture officials discussed their plans to force premises registrations and conversion to NAIS-compliant microchip tags. The September USDA memo just puts this plan into writing."
After two groups, the LAC and the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance (FARFA), made the memo public on November 1, concerned animal owners promptly started calling their state departments of agriculture to inquire what it meant. In response, USDA and pro-NAIS industry organizations such as the American Horse Council (AHC) have launched a campaign to re-cast the memo.
"This is the usual response; they are denying the plain meaning of the memo," says Judith McGeary, Executive Director of FARFA and herself a small farmer. "In a recent letter, AHC declared that anti-NAIS activists did not understand the memo and that the memo was discussing plans for some unspecified time in the future," says McGeary. "But the memo was issued by the agency, written in the present tense, with no caveats or limitations."
Some USDA regional officials have stated that they haven't even read the memo. Some state agriculture officials have said they do not plan to enforce it, while one state agency has said it will be enforced only for programs paid for by the USDA. McGeary questions, "What would they have done if activists had's publicized the memo? The agencies' pattern is to push NAIS behind closed doors, and to try to discredit any opposition by disclaiming the agencies' own written plans once revealed. The agencies and businesses that will profit from NAIS are determined to push the program through by whatever means they can find. It;s past time for Congress and State Legislatures to rein in these rogue agencies."
For further information about NAIS, visit and support www.libertyark.net
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