Letter to Chairman Vigil and Members of the Board

Colorado State Fair Board of Commissioners
1001 Beulah Avenue
Pueblo, CO 81004

Dear Chairman Vigil and Members of the Board:

I run a modest cow-calf and sheep operation in Virginia and West Virginia. My family has been involved in traditional American agriculture for 200 years. A number of my friends from your state have recently alerted me to your proposal to mandate 4-H members sign up for NAIS "Premises Registration" in order to participate in fair-related livestock activities. As youngsters, all of my four sons participated in 4-H livestock activities and county fairs.

NAIS is claimed to be a "voluntary program," but it appears federal actions (as well as your board's proposed mandates) are more closely modeled on the command-and-control system used by the Russians in the 1950s, where parents reared the children to the age of five or six years, at which point they became the 'property' of the state. In many cases, Cooperative Extension, 4-H and FFA leaders are coercing children to register parents' premises. Having failed to convince adults, USDA agents and their allies want to bully minors into the "voluntary program." What does this say about the integrity and ethics of USDA's agents and "partners" or the legality of such registrations of private property by minors under duress?

After more than two years, only 25 percent of farms and ranches have premise IDs registered, a large percentage by subterfuge. 75 percent have not bought into NAIS, even after massive tax expenditures and propaganda campaigns. The message seems pretty clear. USDA's and its "partners'" record of animosity toward family farm and ranch owners is one of many reasons.

NAIS Premises Registration has nothing to do with animal health, disease prevention or food safety. With contaminated produce from Mexico, poison-laced food and toys from Red China and TB-infected illegals working in food-processing plants nationwide, claiming NAIS could protect us and our livestock is a sick joke.

NAIS is intended for land, animal and people control - an industrial inventory tracking system designed to vertically integrate all livestock into what USDA calls "the national herd." NAIS corporate partners would profit, protected by USDA's self-aggrandizing bureaucracy. Farmers and ranchers would be at their mercy, merely expendable, contract labor. Consumers would suffer fewer choices, sub-standard products and ever higher prices at 'The Company Store.'

As you consider the Premises Registration mandate, I urge you to think long and hard about whose side you are on, about whose interests you represent and are working to protect. If we are really concerned about "the future of agriculture in America" we need to think about the future we give to those youngsters who are working with and learning about livestock. Will it be serfdom under the thumb of state and federal bureaucrats, patterned on a failed program exhumed from the Soviet era? Or will it be the opportunity for freedom and productive innovation through private initiative and individual choice?

Sincerely,
Leo Schwartz (VI)

Good Neighbor Committee
P.O. Box 155 - La Salle, CO  80645
info@goodneighborlaw.com

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