On July 17 I attended a town hall meeting sponsored by the Berks Equine Council to discuss the National Animal Identification System. The USDA’s NAIS coordinator, Neil E. Hammerschmidt, gave a glowing presentation on the benefits of the new system, emphasizing the need for a timely response to potential disease outbreaks in livestock. He outlined the components of the system as a 7 character Premises ID# to be assigned to every premises where livestock are housed, managed or exhibited; and a15 digit Animal ID# to be assigned to each animal. (In the case of poultry or swine, a Group/Lot ID# could take the place of the AID#.) The AID# would be permanently attached to each animal with either a visual tag or an RFID microchip tag/implant. All livestock movements between premises, as well as births, deaths, and ownership transfers, would be reported via these two numbers to a massive Animal Tracking Database to be stored for future reference in case of a disease outbreak.
Mr. Hammerschmidt was careful to point out that premises registration is free and voluntary. He warned, however, that the USDA is prepared to pursue “development of regulations through normal rule making procedures” if full voluntary participation is not achieved by January of 2009.
Hmmmm. Sounds like a plan. Can anyone think of a good reason why we shouldn’t tag people too? Just imagine how much more efficiently our benevolent masters could respond if the dreaded avian flu should break out among us! How can we sleep at night knowing that if there was a sudden epidemic, federal health officials would be unable to determine whether we had been in company with an infected person or not? It’s a wonder that bovine spongiform encephalopathy hasn’t already depopulated half of the country in the absence of such critical disease fighting tools as the NAIS provides.
On second thought, maybe there are a few drawbacks. I would never want to be misunderstood as suggesting that the warmhearted do-gooders in Washington D.C. might use our personal information to harm us, but maybe, just maybe some terrorist could gain access to the wealth of information they are assembling. Then what?
Dr. Mary Zanoni of Farm for Life took issue with the characterization of the program as voluntary, pointing out that in at least two states the departments of Agriculture have submitted large blocks of information regarding premises locations to the NAIS database without the consent of the property owners affected. These owners then received notice that they had been assigned Premises ID#s, in spite of the fact that they were not even notified of the submission of their information to the federal government.
One lady in the audience commented that the entire program smacked of George Orwell’s 1984. An interesting observation, especially when one considers the fact that if anyone had predicted in 1990 that within a decade the USDA would be developing a serious plan to number and track every single significant movement of every privately owned livestock animal in the country, they would have been laughed out of town as a raving, paranoid conspiracy theorist. Now many folks are seriously wondering, not if, but when the next logical step will be taken and they will be subjected to similar surveillance.
Another attendee questioned whether the program would eventually be farmed out to private companies, and worried that such a move could lead to increased cost for livestock owners. His question failed to recognize that the program isn’t actually free. The concern was partially merited, however: since stockholders would not likely allow a private company to borrow into the trillions and still run an annual deficit, privatization could potentially force producers to pay for the program directly in addition to their tax bill.
Several members of the audience asked whether the program was constitutional. Hammerschmidt studiously avoided answering the question; in fact he avoided most of the questions asked during the meeting. He and Dr. John Weimer, also of the USDA, displayed an exceptional level of caution in their responses, rarely making statements that could be assigned definite meanings. An interesting feature of the meeting was the inability of Hammerschmidt or his colleagues to specify precisely what affected livestock owners would be required to do, or what action would be taken if they failed to do it. The USDA appears to have taken it for granted that livestock owners will be standing in line to receive further instructions regarding the disclosure of their private information to the federal government as they are made available. I sincerely question whether that will be the case.
While such a deep concern for the safety of the American people surely is commendable, there is one more point that ought to be considered. In order to understand the impact this program could have, it may be helpful to consider the results of other regulatory solutions to safety concerns. Forty years ago, it was the unquestioned right of law-abiding citizens to arm themselves for defensive purposes. Since the imposition of the Concealed Carry Permit (which purported to increase public safety by requiring periodic background checks for armed citizens), a number of formerly law-abiding individuals have found themselves imprisoned for no other crime than doing what Pennsylvania citizens had always done: carrying a weapon. Thirty years ago everyone owned a dog. Today, in this state, a fine of three hundred dollars per dog is imposed for failure to first obtain a dog license. Twenty years ago, seatbelts were merely required to be in vehicles for the safety of passengers. Today one can be fined for failing to wear a seatbelt; an act which endangers no one but themselves.
There was a time when a man was free to build an addition on his home whenever he chose; to build a useful product and sell it to his neighbors; to offer a service to the neighborhood and profit from his work; when even the profits he made were his own business and no one else’s. Today he cannot legally replace the shingles on his roof without a building permit; build a product without the proper zoning and use permits; offer a service for profit without a business license; and if he should fail to meticulously report to Big Brother the details of his personal finances, he finds himself jailed as a dishonest cheat. And what are the benefits we receive from each of these new limitations on our personal freedom? Roofs leak just as they always have; only now we have to call a licensed and insured contractor to fix them. We don’t have to put up with our neighbor working in his shop late at night, because for the most part, our neighbors don’t make anything; China does that for us. We have been so dehumanized that we seriously assume that an unlicensed businessman is an incompetent one. And we don’t even mind giving personal information to our bloated and bankrupt government, because it’s what all good Americans do, and after all, we don’t have anything to hide!
So what does this have to do with the National Animal Identification System? Simply this: when the NAIS becomes mandatory, those small, backyard livestock owners who don’t report every time their daughter’s pony goes to a 4-H show, every time they butcher a steer, or every time their neighbor’s billy comes over to freshen their milk goat, will become criminals. That’s right, criminals. And for what? Once again in the name of safety, a new class of law-breakers will have been created where none existed before. Can you imagine buying organic meat on the black market? If the past is any indication, that may soon be a reality.
How much is too much?
