According to Hometown Conservative, the USDA is going to back off its plan for a centralized database for its NAIS plan. Instead it will rely, quite smartly perhaps, on databases already established for tracking animals. The USDA is also weakening its stance on mandatory compliance for the NAIS, hoping for voluntary compliance through "market incentives". This is great news, but I don’t imagine that the threat will go away.

I don’t necessarily disagree with the concept of animal tracking or identification. I do, however, have grave reservations of linking animals, private residences or farms and the US government. I also disagree with manditory anything, and threats for non-compliance. And satellite or radio tracking seemed a bit excessive. Just another plan for the government to spy and control? Perhaps.  Traceability is a good thing. But the NAIS using it as a buzz word to ramrod a slapdash plan forward which would have ruined small farmers was crazy. That this plan has already cost over $19 million is inexcusable.

Centralization of farm records, livestock locations, or our food sources is the last thing we need. Haven’t the bioterrorism scenario gurus taught us anything. We need to foster the small, local and very traceable farms. If I know the farms with in 250 miles of where I live produce for for my area and I can check those farms out, that can’t be a bad thing. That I can choose which of those farms to buy from creates a demand for all the farms to excell to offer consumers the best. If there is a problem with Farm X, it become far more noticeable and quickly identified at the local level than in any national scheme.

We need to get away from the concept that our food should be as cheap as possible. That’s what’s led to Mad Cow, E. Coli, and crappy tasting chicken. It’s also led to dangerous green onions, cantaloupe you can’t eat without bleaching, and flavorless lettuce which will shoot through you like your some kind of flume. If produce and animals are grown and handled in a limited, local area then transportation costs are reduced and disease transmission is limited. As it is now, the average ingredient in your kitchen travels around 1500 miles to get to you. You’re lucky if that is less. Hauling animals from factory farms to feed lots for "finishing"–like 3 weeks on a muck filled concrete eating GMO corn and slipping in excrement is improving the flavor–and then to slaughter houses hundreds of miles away only causes disease to spread and traceability to diminish. What we need it true farm to table, local production centers. Farmer Y raises animals and they travel no more than 250 to 500 miles and they go from his yard straight to the back of a butcher shop, all supervised and vet inspected, and then to you the consumer. Same with produce. From farm to local distribution center to markets or tables. Sure all this won’t transplant the Mega Mart Food Center, but a little bit more of this and less of Styrofoam packaged mystery meat from halfway across the country and we’d all be better off–no need to spend the rest of the budgeted $33 million on Animal Tracking and Privacy Invasion.

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