Four organizations representing farmers, ranchers, and consumers issued a press release (shown below) praising the USDA for dropping its National Animal ID System. Those groups are Food & Water Watch, the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, the National Family Farm Coalition, and R-CALF USA (Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America). They say that NAIS “was created by industrial livestock and meatpacking interests to shift the burden of animal disease problems onto the backs of family farmers instead of corporate agribusinesses” and “The imposition of NAIS would have severely hindered the recent movement towards more sustainable local food systems.”

Furthermore, Food & Water Watch said that NAIS did not address the root cause of our food safety and animal disease problems:

 “Now that the USDA has realized that the proposed NAIS was unworkable, it’s time for the agency to turn its attention to an effort that would actually protect consumers,” said Patty Lovera, assistant director for Food & Water Watch.  “USDA should start improving the testing of meat in slaughterhouses where many of our food safety problems occur, and fix their inspection policies to make sure that contaminated meat is traced back to the slaughterhouses were it was produced.”