It can be stated with complete certainty that such a meeting will not magically unearth any of the solutions which are supposedly being sought.
Instead, as the notice pretty much acknowledges, producers will march to the microphone and provide the exact same resistance to such a program they have provided for decades. They most emphatically do not want to absorb the costs, sacrifice the privacy, or incur the potential liability that such a system would impose upon them.
local agriculture advocates say NAIS would force farmers to pay for tracking devices, potentially threatening the ability of their businesses to survive.
"Farming is such a marginal business as it is," Westminster Agricultural Commission member Kerrie Hertel said. "You're already not making a living. At some point, you just have to ask, 'Is it still worth it?'"
NAIS is a solution in search of a problem, and one that will have a severely negative impact on independent family farmers and will do nothing to improve food safety and animal health. If USDA is sincere in its attempt to protect livestock producers, consumers and animal health, it would focus its resources where the problems have been well documented.
We have seen millions of pounds of meat recalled due to unsanitary conditions and a lack of USDA oversight at slaughter plants. These problems are due to no fault of the producer, and this is one place we should be calling for increased scrutiny. The attempt to push liability from the huge corporate packers onto the farmer will not make our food safer. NAIS will not solve our food safety issues.
Also, USDA has continued to allow imports of livestock from countries with known disease problems. Corporate controlled factory farms are polluting our water, creating documented health problems and creating consumer concerns about food safety. And there is a severe lack of competition, especially within the livestock marketplace, such that we have never seen in our history.
The livestock industry is at risk as a result of USDA not addressing these "very real" problems, while instead they insist on pursuing this radical and colossal creation of corporate-driven, government bureaucracy. There are a lot of things USDA can do right now to help producers, and NAIS is not one of them.
