Truth Farmer

Fall out from the MIAC report continues. I have it on good authority that there will soon be copies of the same report from many different states that will be available.

I supported Ron Paul until he didn’t have the cajones to run anymore because he wanted to go back to his very effective (ahem) seat in the Congress. Then I supported Chuck Baldwin. Anyone with any sense of how things really are in this nation MUST realize that the only position from which we could be resptred to a Constitutional Democratic Republic is the Executive Position.

This link is to the original article in the Washington Times

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/06/tsa-detains-official-from-ron-paul-group/

Listen to the 20 minute audio this gentleman recorded on his cellphone while being detained and interrogated by TSA agents in St. Louis when departing after the conference.

http://video1.washingtontimes.com/video/tsabierfeldt.mp3

TSA detains official from Ron Paul group

Audrey Hudson , Washington Times, Monday, April 6, 2009

The Transportation Security Administration is investigating the detention and harassment of a Ron Paul organization official by airport screeners, an incident that was caught on tape at a St. Louis airport.

Steve Bierfeldt, director of development for Campaign for Liberty , was selected for additional screening after officials spotted a metal box in his luggage that contained a large amount of cash and checks made out to the campaign.

Mr. Bierfeldt was attending his organization’s regional conference in St. Louis and said he was keenly aware, as the situation unfolded March 29, of a controversial report issued to Missouri law enforcement officials intended to identify members of radical militia members.

“Militia members most commonly associate with third-party political groups,” said the report, issued Feb. 20 by the Missouri Information Analysis Center . “It is not uncommon for militia members to display Constitution Party, Campaign for Liberty or Libertarian material. These members are usually supporters of former presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin and Bob Barr.”

Mr. Bierfeldt was carrying Campaign for Liberty bumper stickers and other campaign literature, and was interrogated by TSA screeners and airport police at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport for nearly a half-hour before being allowed on his flight to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport .

The money he was carrying, more than $4,700, was in the form of cash and checks received from ticket sales, bumper stickers, books and other conference-related items.

Mr. Bierfeldt recorded the event on his iPhone, and provided a copy to The Washington Times for review.

On the tape, Mr. Bierfeldt is asked repeatedly where he works, where he obtained the money and why he was in St. Louis .

In each instance, Mr. Bierfeldt asked whether he was required by law to answer the questions.

“You want to play smartass, and I’m not going to play your f–ing game,” the TSA official said.

Mr. Bierfeldt continued to refuse to answer, asking whether he was compelled by law to do so. The officers accused him of “doublespeak” and “acting like a child.”

“Are you from this planet?” one officer asked.

The officers threatened to handcuff him and turn him over to the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration for questioning.

“You’re going to have to prove why you have so much money to the DEA,” a second unidentified officer said.

“We’re going to help you understand [the law],” the TSA official said.

As he was being led away by the officers questioning him in the recording, another unidentified officer approached the group and asked Mr. Bierfeldt whether he worked for Mr. Paul and whether the money was campaign contributions.

Mr. Bierfeldt responded, “Yes,” and was told by that officer that he was “free to go.”

But one of the detaining officers said he was “not all that ready to let him walk” back onto the concourse, and held him for another five minutes.

“I was not refusing to answer the questions. I was only saying, as per the law, ‘Am I legally required to answer the questions?'” Mr. Bierfeldt later said in an interview with The Times.

“We are becoming far too eager to give away our liberties in the face of false security. We want to make our plane and we don’t want a five-minute hassle so we are eager to give up our freedom, and that is unfortunate,” Mr. Bierfeldt said.

“I don’t believe I was legally required to tell them. Carrying cash is not a crime,” Mr. Bierfeldt said. “It is a dangerous precedent if the government can order you to tell them where you get your money, and no law requires them to know where I work or where I spend my free time and where I go on vacation.”

Asked whether his employment with Mr. Paul’s committee prompted more scrutiny, Mr. Bierfeldt said: “I don’t know, but it may not have helped that they were aware of where I worked.

“I was obviously with the campaign and I was aware of that report. I didn’t want to tell them off the bat that I worked for the campaign and Ron Paul, because the report said we were potential members of the militia, and that’s why I asked what my rights were,” Mr. Bierfeldt said.

Mr. Paul, a U.S. House member and honorary chairman of the grass-roots lobbying organization, said he was “rather shocked” by the incident.

“This sort of encounter is a sign of bad things to come,” said the Texas Republican and 2008 presidential-primary contender.

“People need to know their rights, and law enforcement officers, even if their intentions are noble, should never be allowed to bully and detain law-abiding citizens,” Mr. Paul said. “Steve´s experience is a prime example of how our liberties are in real peril and that we need to wake up to what’s going on in our country.”

The TSA issued a statement Friday confirming that the metal box triggered the “need for additional screening,” but said the behavior of the screening officer was inappropriate.

“Because the box contained a number of items including a large amount of cash, all of which needed to be removed to be properly screened, it was deemed more appropriate to continue the screening process in a private area,” the statement said.

“The tone and language used by the TSA employee was inappropriate. TSA holds its employees to the highest professional standards. TSA will continue to investigate this matter and take appropriate action,” the statement said.

The Homeland Security agency further explained that carrying large amounts of cash through airport checkpoints “may be investigated by law enforcement authorities if criminal activity is suspected.”

“As a general rule, passengers are required to cooperate with the screening process. Cooperation may involve answering questions about their property, including why they are carrying a large sum of cash. A passenger who refuses to answer questions may be referred to appropriate authorities for further inquiry,” the TSA said.

Mr. Bierfeldt made his flight on time and said he had not decided whether to file a formal complaint against the officers or the agency.

“Everyone in these types of situations needs to stand up for their rights,” said Mr. Bierfeldt, whose organization describes itself as supporting constitutional ideals and a free-market society.

The Campaign for Liberty already had objected to Missouri ‘s militia report. On March 24, Missouri Department of Public Safety Director John Britt sent a letter to all the named candidates acknowledging the state had made a mistake.

“I have ordered that the offending report be edited so as to excise all reference to Ron Paul, Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin and to any third-party political organizations,” Mr. Britt said. “Additionally, you may rest assured that the report is not posted on any website maintained by the State of Missouri .”

“The Missouri Department of Public Safety regrets any inconvenience or issues caused inadvertently by the unnecessary inclusion of certain components by MIAC in its militia report,” Mr. Britt said.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/06/tsa-detains-official-from-ron-paul-group/

Today on Truth Farmer radio show, I will be speaking with a fellow Missourian, Tim Neal about this report and the ever strengthening police state being developed in the nation. Later I will try to post a link to the report itself, but for now, please read Chuck Baldwin’s response to what has been served up for all of those who love this country.

My Response To MIAC Report
By Chuck Baldwin
March 24, 2009

This column is archived at
http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2009/cbarchive_20090324.html

By now, readers should be familiar with the Missouri Information Analysis
Center (MIAC) report dated 02/20/09 and titled, “MIAC Strategic Report: The
Modern Militia Movement.” In this dreadfully malicious and slanderous “law
enforcement sensitive” secret police report, Governor Jeremiah (Jay) Nixon;
John Britt, Director of the Missouri Department of Public Safety; James
Keathley, Colonel, Missouri State Highway Patrol; and Van Godsey, Director
of MIAC categorize certain citizens as being potential violence-prone
“militia members.” I would venture to guess that more than 75% of the entire
population of the United States would fit the MIAC’s broad definition of
someone who would fall into the aforementioned category.

According to the MIAC report, if you oppose any of the following, you could
qualify for being profiled as a potential dangerous “militia member”:

The United Nations
The New World Order
Gun Control
The violation of Posse Comitatus
The Federal Reserve
The Income Tax
The Ammunition and Accountability Act
A possible Constitutional Convention
The North American Union
Universal Service Program
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
Abortion
Illegal Immigration

Again, I would bet that at least 75% of the American people would oppose at
least one or more items on the above list. Well, according to the MIAC
report, that is sufficient to make them potential dangerous “militia
members.”

However, it is the following statement contained in the MIAC report that is
particularly disturbing to yours truly. Under the heading “Political
Paraphernalia,” the report states, “Militia members most commonly associate
with 3rd party political groups. It is not uncommon for militia members to
display Constitutional [sic] Party, Campaign for Liberty, or Libertarian
material. These members are usually supporters of former Presidential
Candidate [sic]: Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr.”

The obvious inference of the above statement links Ron Paul, Bob Barr, and
myself to potential dangerous “militia members.” The broader implication is
that the millions of people who supported Ron Paul, Bob Barr, or myself are
likewise categorized as potential dangerous “militia members.” This is a
classic case of broad-brushed police profiling. Can you imagine the fallout
of this preposterous report had the names Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and
Maxine Waters been used instead of the names Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and
Bob Barr?

Accordingly, Ron Paul, Bob Barr, and I wrote a formal letter to the
above-named Missouri officials demanding “that the following-described
document be immediately removed from any and all websites associated with or
maintained by the state of Missouri or any agency thereof, including the
MIAC; that the said document no longer be circulated by the state of
Missouri or any agency thereof or associated therewith; and that the state
of Missouri repudiate its references to the three of us contained therein.”

To view the full text of our letter to Governor Nixon of Missouri, go here:

http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/MIAC-Letter.pdf

Ladies and gentlemen, we simply cannot allow this kind of police profiling
to continue. I assure you, this phenomenon is not limited to the State of
Missouri. Every state that has a “Fusion Center” is being fed this kind of
nonsense on a regular basis. You and I are commonly referred to as
“extremists” in these secret police reports. This has been happening in
earnest for the past couple of months and is operating under the auspices of
the federal Department of Homeland Security. And people with a public
platform (such as myself, Ron Paul, Bob Barr, and a host of others) are now
being singled out by name. How long will it be before police agencies begin
“picking up and hauling away” those people whose names are mentioned in
these reports? It may be sooner than we think.

To see if your state has a “Fusion Center,” go here:

http://www.dhs.gov/xinfoshare/programs/gc_1156877184684.shtm

The only thing that will stymie this nonsense is a huge public outcry
opposing it. Yes, the people of this country (that means YOU) still have the
power to put a stop to this kind of totalitarian thinking. If we do nothing,
however, it will soon be too late to stop it. We either stop it now, or it
will quickly mushroom into a leviathan that will both monitor and control
the personal opinions and speech of every man, woman, and child in this
country. No, I am not exaggerating.

The Feds already monitor virtually every phone call, email, and public
speech in the country. How long before these secret police reports will be
used as justification to arrest and incarcerate people because of their
ideas and opinions, labeling them as a “threat” or as “dangerous” to
society?

Here is the contact information for the appropriate officials in Missouri:

Email address: Brandon.middleton@mshp.dps.mo.gov

Missouri Information Analysis Center
Division of Drugs & Crime Control
P. O. Box 568
Jefferson City, MO 65102-0568
Phone: 573-751-6422
Toll Free: 866-362-6422
Fax: 573-751-9950

And while you are at it, you should also contact the state police agency as
well as the governor’s office in your state, especially if your state has a
“Fusion Center” (see web site above). Mark it down: if you have ever
publicly opposed any of the above-mentioned issues or organizations, or have
ever publicly supported an independent Presidential candidate, YOU ARE BEING
PROFILED RIGHT NOW!

We await the State of Missouri’s response. In the meantime, what are you
going to do?

P.S. Even as this column is being distributed, we have just received a reply
from the Director of the Missouri Department of Public Safety, John Britt. I
will analyze and respond to this statement in my next column.

*If you appreciate this column and want to help me distribute these
editorial opinions to an ever-growing audience, donations may now be made by
credit card, check, or Money Order. Use this link:

http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/donate.php

(c) Chuck Baldwin

As an intro, one of the major pushers of NAIS is the Farm Bureau. This is from an individual who has sought to be invisible due to the mandated nature of NAIS in their prior dwelling……Volumes are said, and highly pertinent to the current destrcution of the smaller dairies right now……….

Farm Bureau sells out its national constituency.

Word came to us recently that the National Farm Bureau Federation (NFBF) is sending a postcard to their 3 million members polling them on their stance on the USDA’s proposed National Animal Identification System (NAIS). Members are to fill this card out and mail it appropriately.

NFBF could just as well have stapled a condom on that postcard. Farm Bureau claims to be the voice for the independent farmer, but they have been actively working for years to create a national animal identification system and a premises ID. In the early 90s, NFBF was instrumental in creating the National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA). The NIAA, in 1999, started working with the USDA for implementation for the tagging of livestock and the registering of premises into a national database. The mechanism for implementing this program is disease eradication programs. In Michigan, starting in 2005, the RFID tag and the registering of premises began with the TB eradication program the Michigan Department of Agriculture had started several years earlier. TB, a disease that is not highly contagious and of no threat to human health, is being used as an excuse to kill off healthy animals in the name of controlling a disease.

Over 100 million dollars has been spent to “depopulate” more than 40 herds of mostly healthy cattle in Michigan. Now the USDA has its sights set on brucellosis eradication in the Yellowstone region of the western United States, TB in the southwest—the result of cattle coming from Mexico, and any other “emerging” disease that they consider a threat to our food system.

I had the opportunity some years ago, as an unwitting member of Farm Bureau, to attend a Farm Bureau hosted regional meeting where the attendees were briefed on the new USDA farm program at that time. We listened to a doctor Ag Economy “expert” from Michigan State University explain how the USDA calculates target price for the loan deficiency payment for the political commodity program. After listening to his confusing, complex, explanation of how all this comes about, I raised the question, “Wouldn’t it be much simpler to go back to the Farm Program of 1948 and calculate farm prices with simple arithmetic, which would give farmers a much improved price so they would not have to borrow money to run their operations?” I do not recall the answer. But the President of Michigan Farm Bureau, Wayne Wood, who was sitting behind me, came up and talked to me afterwards. His family runs a large confinement dairy in the thumb of lower Michigan. He straight-faced told me to my face, that the American farmer cannot receive a price that he would like to have because of the law of supply and demand. There is too much production.

I took a step forward toward him and I said, “What about MPC, Milk Protein Concentrate, that is imported into this country by the large corporate processors, such as Kraft Corporation, that is used in the cheese vats so that the low quality, A-1 type milk that the large inefficient dairy Holstein cow produces will yield a higher volume of cheese?” –the type of cow that Wayne Wood has in his dairy barns. Mr. Wood looked down at his shoes, I think to check to make sure his shoe strings weren’t tied together so he wouldn’t trip when he stepped back from me, and he said, in a distressed tone, “We are looking into that.”

The industrial American Dairy Industry is going broke. The largest growth sector in the new food system is the small farm of 1 – 9 head of cattle and under $1000 in annual sales, an increase of over 63,000 such farms between 2002 and 2007.

According to the recently released data from the USDA’s 2007 ag census, the USDA’s numbers only represent those food producers who filled the survey out and sent it back. How many are there really? People are opting out of the industrial system and going directly to their neighbor or local farm market. Is NFBF going to support Congresswoman De Lauro’s HR875 that has 36 co-sponsors, that sets up a Food Safety Administration? A new agency where the Administrator is given a blank check to regulate, control and license every “food production unit” with a million dollar a day fine for each offense for every day that you are not in compliance?

Maybe NFBF will send a postcard out to its constituency with two condoms stapled to the next postcard. Oh, by the way, the condom is new bailout mascot, the bailout for the failing corporate entity.

The condom allows for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you a sense of security while you are actually being screwed. However, the ones that Farm Bureau is sending out, if they take my suggestion, will have holes in them because of the staples.

Shame on you Farm Bureau, shame, shame, shame.

–Vigilance from a sheltered place.

p.s. You grab a wolf by the ears, good luck, you’re going to need it. You can’t control him and you don’t dare let him go.

by Doreen Hannes

::What’s the premise behind Premise Identification in the NAIS::

All you have to do is register your property with the USDA under the National Animal Identification System. You’ll be assigned a seven-character number that stays with the property forever and the USDA “owns” that number according to ” A User Guide” which is their latest public document on the program.

The premise id number or PIN will set you solidly in the position of giving up your rights to ownership. How can I say that? Well, words have meaning for a reason. The USDA, in their original documents regarding NAIS, refers to participants as “stakeholders” repeatedly, twenty one times in the Draft Strategic Plan alone. They also use the term “national herd” and tell us that NAIS is necessary to protect the health and marketability of the “national herd”. First let’s look at the PIN and then at animal identification with official NAIS compliant tags.

The USDA claims to “own” the PIN (page6 A User Guide) and when one is assigned a PIN either through truly volunteering for it or being rolled into it via other disease control programs, it stays with the property forever (Draft Program Standards pg 16-read the whole section on PIN) and the person who owns the property becomes a stakeholder. The definition of stakeholder is as follows:

“The term stakeholder, as traditionally used in the English language in law and notably gambling, is a third party who temporarily holds money or property while its owner is still being determined.”

Yep. While it’s owner is still being determined. It doesn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy. Now let’s look at the definition of ownership as a comparison. Wikipedia defines the term as follows:

“Ownership is the state or fact of exclusive possession or control of property, which may be an object, land/real estate, intellectual property or some other kind of property. It is embodied in an ownership right also referred to as title.”

So, if you have exclusive possession or control of the property in question, how can you be a stakeholder? Well, you can’t be. Either it’s your property, or it’s someone else’s property. With the NAIS, it’s not your property once you have a PIN making you a stakeholder and putting you under the jurisdiction of the Area Veterinarian In Charge or AVIC. (“A User Guide” is loaded with ‘consult your AVIC’ with any questions about anything.)

This brings about some very serious questions regarding not only livestock but also real estate. Since the USDA “owns” the Premise Identification Number (page 6 “A User Guide”) and the number can only be ‘inactivated’ and not expunged or completely annihilated, does it create an encumbrance on property with the PIN? Should that be part of the disclosure on the property? What happens if someone who doesn’t want to be in NAIS in any way buys property with a PIN? (You know, since it’s “voluntary”.) Are they automatically put into the position of stakeholder under the authority of the AVIC? Will the USDA expunge that PIN upon request? According to USDA documents, even though the program is ‘voluntary at the Federal level”, the PIN stays permanently with the property, not with the person who applied for the PIN. What about the person whose property was assigned a PIN via the roll in procedures that have been employed to increase premise registration numbers using other programs like scrapie and brand registration or participation in the QSA program for cattle? What are the answers to these questions? It sure looks like they will need to be determined in court, as the USDA has no answers available in any of their documents.

Then of course we want to know who owns the “national herd” anyway? It can’t be the stakeholder who has been assigned a premise identification number, because the stakeholder is waiting for the rightful owner to be determined, and it can’t be the county or the state if this is indeed the National Animal Identification System. When NAIS is in full implementation, all covered animals, 29 species from clams to cattle, will be required to have official identification. Official identification consists of a NAIS compliant number issued with the country code at the beginning. The country code for the United States is 840. It may or may not surprise you to learn that the 840 code covers all financial instruments, like stocks, checks, and bearable securities otherwise known as dollar bills. You can find this beautiful tidbit by searching for ISO-4217. This International Organization of Standards code covers only financial instruments. When I first looked into the 840 country code there was no designation for 840 under the claimed code of ISO-3166 which is a manufacturing standard. There were only two and three character alpha codes, like US and USA, in ISO-3166. The only assignations 6 months ago for “840” were in the ISO-4217 standard which covers financial instruments and a UN assigned country code.

Regulations are already in place making it unlawful to remove or tamper with an official identification device. (User guide page 39) This regulation will lead to fully implemented three component NAIS in the not too distant future. Here’s the thing, if you cannot remove an NAIS tag from an animal and the person who sold the animal is a participant in NAIS then the sale of the animal will need to be reported as a high risk activity, and the premise id of the person buying the officially identified animal will have to be recorded, or assigned whichever the case may be, the premise id is not to be expunged only inactivated if animals are no longer held on the property. No rules have been promulgated regarding whether or not official devices must be disclosed as being affixed to the animal at a sale barn, so one could actually purchase an animal with no foreknowledge of it’s status as an NAIS compliant animal. However there are plenty of references to participation in the NAIS being built upon the PIN as the foundation of the system. You can’t have an NAIS id device on an animal without having a PIN, you can’t record ‘events’ regarding an animal in the NAIS information repositories without having an NAIS identification device on the animal. It’s one, two, three, with the foundation of the entire system being premise identification and changing the status of the property holder from owner to stakeholder.

To further substantiate my claims, please look into the case of Mr. Dobbins in the United Kingdom. Some of his numbers on his registered show herd of dairy cattle were not jibing with their passports, so Defra (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, the UK’s USDA) took all of his cattle passports and confiscated his entire herd giving him 48 hours to positively identify all 576 of his cattle before they destroyed them. He couldn’t identify them because Defra had confiscated all of his documents. It’s like show me the title to the car, while I have taken the title and hidden it in my house thirty miles away. As an added slap in the face, no indemnity is necessary under EC regulations when animals are not identified in exact compliance with their regulations. The man’s entire livelihood was destroyed because not every piece of paper was in the prescribed order.

The USDA doesn’t seem to think we can add these things together well enough to see why we have no choice but to resist this scheme with everything we have because they truly believe we are not competent enough to see the correlations between other nation’s experiences with these systems and then extrapolate the consequences for ourselves. In the USDA’s NAIS How-To-Handbook for their partners in the crime of NAIS implementation, they advise that all messages for potential NAIS stakeholders be designed for a sixth grade reading level. They also give the ‘major themes’ of those of us opposing the program and state that our arguments all ‘fall into a few buckets’. They never do address any of the arguments, and they fail to acknowledge two of the largest arguments of religious objections and Constitutional issues. The Handbook is quite a piece of work and illustrates how “open and transparent” the USDA really is about their desires for the program….After all, they are so open that we had to get a user name with a password to even see the documents they’ve spent taxpayer money developing to sell this program to people without full disclosure and with no actual cost analysis.

It seems to me that those at the top of the NAIS food chain think that since we trade real labor for fake money to pay fraudulent taxes on stuff we don’t own we wouldn’t notice just one more affront. It’s time to shake off your righteous indignation and ask these officials if they’d like some Boston Tea. ***

Please check out these links:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/18/nbook18.xml Dobbins article

Visit: http://www.nonais.org and scroll down the right hand side for USDA documents on NAIS. At the very least you need to read the 2005 Draft Strategic Plan, then The Implementation Plan and the User Guide.

My articles are also housed at News With Views, newswithviews.com
http://www.newswithviews.com/Hannes/doreen4.htm

This is probably the most notable thing I have written thus far. All I can say is that after spending hundreds of hours looking for the genesis of this obsession with control (other than the obvious greed inspired motives) I finally found the absolute proof and God helped to make it understandable while retaining all the pertinent information…….

by Doreen Hannes

If you’ve been wondering where the insanity masquerading as our federal government ‘food safety’ and animal health protection regulations and laws are coming from, you can now say with certainty that they descend from the organizations within and tied to our international alliances.

Before you throw a conditioned response out that this is all just ‘conspiracy theory’ propagated by right wing nut cases, you had best be able to understand the impact on trade of the SPS and TBT agreements made through the WTO (World Trade Organization) and be able to relate the position of the United States in the OIE and Codex.

Should you be unfamiliar with the NAIS (National Animal Identification System) the shortest explanation that can be given of the proposed system is that anyone who has any type of livestock, say two chickens, will have to register their property, complete with global positioning satellite coordinates, microchip their chickens with an NAIS ISO11785 compliant chip, and report within 24 hours if said chickens ever leave the property, hatch out chicks (another chip required), go to the vet or die. No kidding. To learn more about that, you must read the “Draft Strategic Plan” and the “Draft Standards” which are available only on line. The USDA will not send you copies of these documents, but they will send you a nice glossy packet with a ‘soft’ description of the program.

This is not an easy subject to relate to people who, by design, have very limited knowledge of our government’s involvement in these organizations, and even less understanding about the mechanisms employed in the organizations. It’s extremely complicated, and at the very least veiled to public scrutiny, but if you are willing to dig and read hundreds of pages of mind numbing rules and agreements, it is there and it is proven.

An introduction to acronyms is necessary. The players involved in the proposed National Animal Identification System being pushed by the USDA, and to be managed by APHIS (Animal Plant Health Inspection Service) are varied. First there is the WTO (World Trade Organization) which reached an agreement amongst participating countries several years ago in Uruguay called the SPS (Sanitary and Phytosanitary) and TBT (Technical Barriers to Trade) agreements.

In laymen’s terms what the SPS agreement says is that each member country can make regulations that must be met by other member countries in order to trade in agricultural goods with each other. These regulations must be in the interest of protecting the country making the regulations from disease, pests, or perceived health dangers. Countries making regulations cannot impose more strict regulations on importer nations than they do on their own nation.

Then there was the TBT (Technical Barriers to Trade) agreement made at the same time in Uruguay. What that says is that developed countries must help less developed countries to advance technologically to be able to participate in trade with other member countries. Developed countries cannot require more than a country is able to achieve and the developed countries need to help the less developed countries to meet their own criteria through funding and other assistance.

Then there is the OIE (Office Internacional Epizooities) or World Animal Health Organization, which although it is independent of the UN in origin works very closely with both the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) and Codex Alimentarius which is a child of the UN and FAO. Codex can be best understood as being the global FDA and OIE as the global USDA. The Untied States of America has membership in both the OIE and the UN and therefore Codex.

The OIE has authority over all member nations veterinary services. Most of the OIE rules are rather innocuous, however they have become increasingly involved in issues directly relating to trade since the advent of the WTO in 1994. OIE has also been increasingly involved with Codex and are working in concert on nearly everything at this time. Of particular importance to the subject of the NAIS (National Animal Identification System) is the issue of ‘traceability/product tracing’ and ‘good farming practices’.

The OIE has a publication available on line called the “Terrestrial Animal Health Standards Commission” which is absolutely loaded with information regarding “traceability/product tracing” and Codex standards on the subject.

On page 41 of the TAHSC (Terrestrial Animal Health Standards Commission) it states that there is a critical relationship between animal identification and the traceability of animal products and that animal identification and traceability are “key tools for animal health, including zoonoses (diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans), and food safety”, as well as “incidents, vaccination programmes, herd/flock management, zoning/compartmentalization, surveillance, early response and notification systems, animal movement controls, and health measures to facilitate trade.”

Also worth noting from page 41 is the following paragraph:

“The Competent Authority in partnership with relevant government agencies and the private sector should establish a legal framework for the implementation and enforcement of animal identification and animal traceability in the country. In order to facilitate compatibility and consistency, relevant international standards and obligations should be taken into account. This legal framework should include elements such as the objectives, scope, organizational agreements including the choice of technologies used for identification and registration, obligation of the parties, confidentiality, accessibility issues and the efficient exchange of information.”

In Appendix XXXIV of the Terrestrial Animal Health Standards document it states that VS (veterinary services) are the “Competent Authority” for animal identification and traceability in all member countries. It also does such fun things as role the words “animal identification system” into the word “animal identification” so that the smaller term may legally be referred to meaning an entire national or international system.

The European Union has made no real secret of the fact that their animal identification requirements are in line with both Codex and the OIE. It is my understanding that RFID will also be a mandatory requirement in the EU in January of 2008. There are a few catch phrases that have become fairly common stemming from the mandates of Codex, such as “farm to fork” traceability and “from stable to table”, that leave no doubt of the identity of the progenitors of the US National Animal Identification System. The USDA and the OIE and Codex as well as the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) state that this is consumer driven.

While there may be a desire on the part of consumers to know the conditions under which their food was raised, the conditions which spark that desire are not conditions caused by small or medium sized agricultural endeavors, or even large privately owned operations. The corporate ag companies with their disregard for life and use of chemicals, antibiotics and hormones to improve their bottom line are responsible for the lack of confidence felt by those who cannot raise their own food. Yet the net effect of this program will be much higher cost for food and a loss of choice for the consumer as smaller farmers will be driven out of business by the costs of compliance and loss of production time because of the increase in paperwork and reporting needs as well as the many millions who will not be able to comply with the system because of deeply held religious convictions or aversions to the loss of freedom necessitated by the monitoring and surveillance implicit in this program.

As a matter of fact, corporate ag will be one of the few beneficiaries of this system because they will be allowed to tag their animals as groups or lots under only one tag per group/lot whereas those who practice more natural forms of animal rearing will need to tag each and every animal born at additional cost with additional reporting time. Reports may also be required on what is being fed to the stock as ‘assurance’ schemes are repeatedly referred to in both OIE and Codex guidelines.

On page 37 of theTAHSC (Terrestrial Animal Health Standards Commission document referred to above) there is a clear and indisputable tie to the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 which passed into law and is enforced by the FDA in the United States. The Bioterrorism Act of 2002 is the Act which is requiring that hay producers in the US register their premises and report who drove the truck, which field it was from, who worked on the harvesting of the hay and to whom the hay was sold. A quote from the TAHSC document showing the clear link follows:

“…the Task Force on Animal Feeding (May 2004) agreed to add a footnote to the title of Section 4.3 “Traceability/Product Tracing and Record keeping of Feed and Feed Ingredients” to indicate the definition developed by the Codex committee on General Principles applied to the Code (Terrestrial Animal Health Code, of the OIE) as appropriate…..the prompt trace-back of feed and feed ingredients should be to the immediate previous source and trace forward should be to the next subsequent recipients.”

Throughout these documents are references to harmonization of identification and traceability methods and standards. In one document by Perry, harmonization is defined as, “the establishment, recognition and application of common sanitary and phyto sanitary measures by different Members.” The United States is a “Member” so the directions following harmonization apply to the US. For food safety, (feed included) we must refer to Codex, for animal health the authority goes to the OIE. In the World Trade Organization documents regarding the SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary agreement) and the TBT (technical barriers to trade agreement) it is recommended that any disputes be mediated by the OIE or Codex.

It is abundantly clear that through these international entanglements our officials are both legislating and regulating our God given and Constitutionally guaranteed rights away. In the name of international trade and globalization these officials have agreed to implement a plan that is destructive to our nation’s existence, as well as our freedom to feed ourselves without intense surveillance.

As a nation we must ask ourselves, is our freedom for sale in the global market? Is selling beef to Japan important enough to throw our Constitution and our children’s future into the trash can? Can we not support ourselves agriculturally with the excellent controls we already have in place? Is your freedom worth more than all the bananas you may eat? To quote Patrick Henry, “Is life so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me,___________________________. I hope you can fill in the blank. **

** You may forward this or reprint it so long as you keep it in it’s entirety and don’t change anything. Thanks!

The NAIS will lead to excessive use of government enforcement measures as is happening in other countries that have implemented these types of programs. The USDA already has the Falliace sheep debacle, and the rather recent Henshaw and Davis Wild Russian Boar issue under their belts. Seeing this come in from the UK let’s you know what will happen if your papers are incorrect. the regulators at work…….

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/18/nbook18.xml

Christopher Booker’s notebook

By Christopher Booker, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 2:37am GMT 19/03/2007

Papers were not in order, so they had to die

Of all the stories I have covered about what is now called the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, few have been more remarkable than the disaster that has just befallen David Dobbin, a 43-year-old Cheshire farmer, who derived his entire livelihood from a large dairy herd. His 567 cows, including pedigree Ayrshires and Holsteins, had won prizes, and were worth upwards of £500,0000.

In 2005 Cheshire trading standards officials, acting for Defra (one hopes Cheshire’s taxpayers do not mind officials whose salaries they pay acting for a government department) began a long series of visits, to inspect the documentation required for Mr Dobbin’s cattle under EC rules. The more they attempted to check the animals’ eight-digit ear tags against their EC “cattle passports”, the more they claimed to have found “irregularities”, although they failed to explain how many or what these were.
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Last November, on Defra’s instructions, the officials seized all Mr Dobbin’s passports, making it illegal for him to move animals off his farm and all but wiping out his income. Last month, serving him with a “notice to identify”, they removed his herd to another farm, stating that, under EC regulation 494/98, it was their intention to destroy all 567 animals.

Dating back to the BSE panic, this diktat says that “if the keeper of an animal cannot prove its identification in two working days, it shall be destroyed without delay” and “without compensation”. These powers, as I noted when the regulation was issued in 1998, were unprecedented. Nevertheless the regulation permits officials to destroy only animals that cannot be identified. Defra has never claimed that the paperwork for most of Mr Dobbin’s cows was not in order, only that the officials had found “what they believed to be an unacceptable level of non-compliance with the regulations”, and that this “could have serious implications for the protection of the human food chain”.

Less than an hour before slaughter was due to begin, Mr Dobbin’s combative Liverpool lawyer, David Kirwan, got a High Court injunction, giving the cows a stay of execution. He also won leave from Mr Justice Goldring for judicial review, on the grounds that Defra was acting beyond its powers. But this month, as the injunction expired, Defra insisted that, unless Mr Dobbin could prove the identification of every one of his animals, they must still be destroyed. Since all his passports, the most obvious means of identification, had been confiscated, this was impossible.

Defra told the court that Mr Dobbin would instead have to provide DNA identification for each animal, within two days. This would have been technically impossible, even if Defra had not moved the cows elsewhere and refused him access.

The need to proceed with the slaughter, Defra argued, was urgent, because it had no resources to look after the cattle properly, causing severe “animal welfare” problems. The judge felt he had little option but to give the go-ahead, and on March 8 and 9 the cows were destroyed.

All Mr Dobbin can now hope for is that the judicial review may confirm that Defra acted outside the law. The officials agreed in court that they had never used these powers on anything like such a scale before. It has not been claimed that Mr Dobbin’s animals posed any health risk (BSE this year is down to a single case). His only alleged offence was “non-compliance” with complex bureaucratic procedures, to an extent which Defra still cannot specify. For this he has seen his livelihood go up in smoke, without a penny in compensation.

This is from my friend Mary, a fellow freedom fighter against the NAIS…..Excellent job on this, and quick, too!

USDA Internal Handbook Advises Animal-Identification Staff to Address Farmers “at the Sixth Grade Level”

The USDA’s confidential “NAIS How-To Handbook,” intended for non-public distribution to Federal and State NAIS personnel, reveals an aggressive campaign to implement NAIS in the face of farmer opposition by strictly controlling communications, manipulating media coverage, concealing the original NAIS program documents, and discrediting opponents.

by

Mary Zanoni, Ph.D., J.D.
P.O. Box 501
Canton, NY 13617
315-386-3199
mlz@slic.com

March 29, 2007

A USDA “NAIS (National Animal Identification System) How-To Handbook,” most recently revised in February 2007, instructs all State and Federal NAIS staff aggressively to promote the supposedly “voluntary” premises ID program. The goal of the campaign and the How-To Handbook is to “increase . . . premises registration results” and to promote during 2007 not only “continued growth in premises registration,” but also the “adoption of animal ID and tracing.” (Handbook, p. 1; USDA’s NAIS Community Outreach bulletin, Feb. 2007, p. 1.)

The Handbook demands uniformity and strict adherence to four “key messages” that staff are to present to audiences of farmers when promoting NAIS. As described by the USDA, these “key messages” “are organized into topic categories and supported with concise sentences. They are designed for an audience reading at the sixth grade level.” (Handbook, p. 41.)

The Handbook originally was designed for a meeting in Kansas City in late October 2006, attended by a total of 132 “State ID Coordinators, Federal ID Coordinators, and members of various livestock industry associations.” (NAIS Community Outreach bulletin, Dec. 2006, p. 1.) The meeting was designed to train all NAIS personnel to adhere strictly to “a communications campaign currently being implemented at the National level.” (Handbook, p. 3.) After the original USDA mandatory NAIS plan, set forth in the Draft Strategic Plan and Draft Program Standards of April 2005, met with an unexpected level of strong opposition from farmers and animal owners, the USDA hired a public-relations firm to analyze the opposition and repackage NAIS with a more congenial-sounding message. (Presentation by Dore Mobley, USDA/APHIS information officer, at the National Institute for Animal Agriculture’s “ID Expo,” August 2006.)

The apparent upshot of the professional public-relations advice was USDA’s completely new marketing campaign for NAIS, implemented in the fall of 2006. Crucial components of the marketing campaign included the Oct. 2006 Kansas City meeting, the Handbook and related promotional materials, and the release of the “NAIS User Guide” in November 2006.

When the USDA launched its new public-relations campaign for NAIS in the fall of 2006, the agency at the same time removed from its website the original NAIS documents, i.e., the Draft Strategic Plan and Draft Program Standards of April 2005. The common criticism of NAIS as “Orwellian” relies in significant part upon the USDA’s expungement of the Draft Strategic Plan and Draft Program Standards from the USDA site. The November 2006 “User Guide” stated that it superseded all previous program documents for NAIS. (User Guide, front cover.)

The “new” NAIS approach: emphasize “voluntary,” but aggressively pursue the maximum number of premises IDs and prepare for individual animal ID and animal tracking. The declared purpose of the Handbook is to “increase . . . premises registration results” (p. 1). Its primary goal is to “contribute significantly toward NAIS premises registration totals,” and reach “NAIS premises registration goals” (p. 4). Animal ID staff are told to emphasize “which messages hit home,” that is, which messages increase premises registration (p. 6). Staff are told to avoid wasting effort on strongly anti-NAIS audiences and instead direct effort toward “On The Fence” or “Pro-NAIS” “targets,” to maximize the number of premises signed up (pp. 7-8). Staff are advised not to “invest[ ] time” in “Anti-NAIS producers” and instead “locate and motivate more favorable individuals” (p. 9). While staff are to tell farmers that participation in premises ID will not compel them to participate in either individual animal ID or animal tracking (Handbook, p. 42), at the same time, staff are to pursue the second and third components of NAIS, “adoption of animal ID and tracing,” during 2007. (NAIS Outreach bulletin, Feb. 2007, p. 1).

USDA promulgates a unified, monolithic message to be used by all NAIS staff. The main purpose of the Kansas City meeting, the Handbook, and the USDA-promulgated advertising and outreach materials has been to focus the NAIS State and Federal staff on a consistent strategy and to prevent staff departures from the USDA-mandated NAIS “message.” As the USDA tells Federal and State NAIS staff, “The Handbook is designed to complement a communications campaign currently being implemented at the National level” (p. 3). The goal is to “change the perceptions of individuals who may be misinformed or confused about the details of the NAIS program.” Staff must use “uniform messages” (p. 4) and carefully follow the instructions on the “APHIS-led communication and information network” (p. 5). Federal and State NAIS staff must conform to “the key messages USDA will use at the national level” (p. 12). “USDA spokespersons are using the messages provided in the Appendix [of the Handbook] to provide consistent information at the national and local level. These messages will be used in speeches, print materials, media interviews and elsewhere” (p. 14). With apparent unconscious irony, at the very time the USDA is enforcing staff adherence to the precise assigned “messages,” the agency simultaneously acknowledges that a common objection voiced by farmers to NAIS is that the program “sounds like Big Brother government” (p. 7). Should it appear that all government presentations on NAIS are beginning to sound alike — well, they are all alike, precisely alike, and it’s by careful design.

USDA instructs Federal and State staff on how to manipulate media coverage of NAIS. The USDA makes clear to NAIS staff that spontaneous responses to the media are not acceptable. As to Federal NAIS employees, we are told, “Federal staff are not authorized to handle media interviews.” Federal staff must refer all media matters to the USDA Legislative and Public Affairs Office (p. 16). Staff are encouraged, however, to use such controlled channels as op-ed pieces, letters to the editor to correct “misinformation,” and canned interviews with experts; the USDA urges staff to rely on the “complete message control” available by communicating through a NAIS website (p. 17). The properly authorized expert communications staff are encouraged to pitch canned pro-NAIS stories to the media, to attempt to influence media editorial content through attending editorial board meetings, and to compose “opinion pieces” “to explain the value of premises registration” (p. 19).

USDA reveals results of its NAIS “Opposition Analysis” and creates standardized responses to the NAIS opposition. The NAIS How-To Handbook’s treatment of the “NAIS Opposition” carefully portrays this opposition as nameless and faceless, and avoids specifying the exact points upon which the opposition arguments are based. The USDA implies that the opposition consists of insignificant “groups and individuals” who are just somehow “mistaken”: “The opposition’s information is largely based on misinformation and misunderstanding, but their zeal and emotion appeal is real” (p. 22).

Although the USDA studiously avoids naming its NAIS opponents, in fact they include: a growing list of groups such as the Northeast Organic Farming Association, R-CALF, the Sierra Club, Food and Water Watch, the National Family Farm Coalition, Family Farm Defenders, Community Farm Alliance of Kentucky, Rural Vermont, Cattle Producers of Washington, South Dakota Stockgrowers Association, Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association. Some of these groups have sponsored the introduction of antiNAIS legislation in at least 9 states in the 2007 legislative session. Similarly, the unspecified “individuals” opposed to the USDA’s implementation of NAIS in fact include medical doctors, information-technology professionals, financial planners, entrepreneurs, lawyers, public-interest lobbyists, and former government employees.

The USDA’s Handbook repeatedly refers to NAIS opponents’ “misinformation,” but fails to specify any statement of the opponents that is other than completely accurate. The USDA’s most detailed list of “opposition” statements, on pp. 23-24 of the Handbook, dates from January through August 2006 and does not identify any specific individuals as sources for the statements. The websites from which the statements are taken permit comments and postings by visitors, and the USDA’s quotations are not attributed to random visitors, more formal opposition statements, or any other particular source. One statement, the last under “Theme 3: Civil Liberties” (p. 23), obviously refers to the Real ID Act (a common ancillary topic of discussion on many NAIS opposition sites), and not to NAIS at all. Indeed, nearly all the statements the USDA quotes under “Opposition Themes” (pp. 23-24) are in fact quite accurate for their time frame of Jan. – Aug. 2006. During those months, the operative NAIS documents were the Draft Strategic Plan and Draft Program Standards, which did indeed impose a fully mandatory NAIS by 2008/2009 and did indeed require the participation of all common livestock species, the microchip or RFID individual identification of nearly all animals except factory-farm chickens and pigs, and the reporting of all animal “movements” and changes of status (birth, death, sale, purchase, slaughter, and all travel off-premises) within 24 hours. Only in subsequent documents did the USDA begin to waver as to some of the original requirements of the Draft Strategic Plan. And not until the USDA’s release of the User Guide in November 2006 did the USDA’s stated policy become “voluntary” rather than “mandatory” NAIS.

Even the USDA’s most comprehensive public-relations campaign can’t sell a bad NAIS system to justly skeptical farmers. The USDA’s Handbook, like its User Guide and its present NAIS approach generally, repeatedly speaks of needing to “correct” or adjust farmers’ attitudes or beliefs about NAIS. Why doesn’t the USDA actually examine the possible flaws in the design, the reasoning of, and the justification for NAIS, and abandon this unwanted and unwarranted intrusion of bureaucracy and technocracy into the lives of farmers and animal owners? Why is the USDA, as is so obvious throughout the Handbook, concerned only with appearance or “perception,” and not with reality?

For all that the USDA may think that farmers function “at the sixth grade level” (Handbook, p. 41), farmers seem to be just too smart to be lured by even the USDA’s most prettily baited NAIS hook. In January 2007, the USDA conducted NAIS “focus groups” in Sacramento, California, Springfield, Missouri, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (NAIS Community Outreach bulletin, March 2007, p. 1.) The participants in the “focus groups” were all livestock producers. The purpose of the “focus groups” was to gauge farmers’ responses to elements of the unified USDA NAIS public-relations campaign, particularly, the new NAIS promotional brochures and the USDA-imposed “key messages” for promoting NAIS. These farmers thus received only the USDA pro-NAIS messages and no “opposition” information. By the USDA’s own admission, these farmers, even after intensive exposure to the USDA’s well orchestrated campaign, would not accept premises registration. The USDA’s “key findings” about the attitudes of the focus-group farmers after they had received the USDA’s (and only the USDA’s) side of the NAIS story are:

“Respondents view NAIS as unwanted government intervention.”

“Current NAIS messaging and brochures will not necessarily motivate producers to register premises.”

So, after several years and multiple millions of dollars’ worth of pro-NAIS propaganda, farmers still want no part of NAIS. Perhaps the USDA should begin to entertain the notion that farmers might not be so “misinformed” after all. Maybe farmers are simply justifiably mistrustful of a government agency that insists on treating the very people it is supposed to serve like children.