Surprising exactly no one, a federal plan to track all U.S. livestock
with ID tags remains controversial with farmers. Surprising some, the
U.S. Department of Agriculture has given up on making it mandatory.
Intended to trace disease and to combat -- wait for it --
agroterrorism, the National Animal Identification System is "admittedly
a very emotional issue," says USDA undersecretary Bruce Knight, who has
traveled the country to meet with skeptics. Since its rollout last
year, NAIS has registered nearly a quarter of the nation's roughly 1.4
million farming "premises"; the next step for farms is to buy
electronic tags for their animals at $2 to $3 a pop. Concerns range
from religious (think tech-wary Amish) to economic to general mistrust
of The Man: "The only reason for [NAIS] is to serve the economic
interests of large meatpackers and people who are going to sell the
technology," said Mary-Louise Zanoni, a small-farm advocate in New
York. Said the agroterrorists: Mwah-ha-ha-ha.
get the backstory, in Grist: Old Big Brother Had a Farm
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Feds Won't Make Livestock-Identification Plan Mandatory
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Situation Normal, All Ducked Up
Grist Magazine, Dec 13, 2006
Straight to the Source
