NAIS Program Abandoned

This might be the first time you have even heard of this. I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs - especially since the proposed program went under revision after revision. But it appeared to mainly be an enormous pain in the rear for small producers like us.

The goal of the National Animal Identification System was to be able to track animals in the event of a large food borne illness outbreak. For instance, let's say Mad Cow shows up in hamburgers - well, where did the meat come from? In the past, it's taken months to track down where infected animals might have come from - if they ever can figure it out. NAIS would eliminate that and make the source of the meat transparent to the authorities and an outbreak could be stopped in it's tracks by only removing contaminated meat. Sounds like a pretty good idea on paper!

But the rules seemed pretty rough on the little guys (well, the big guys too, but they might have been able to absorb the costs better). The producer would be responsible for marking the animals and reporting all movement. It was a common fear among small farmers that we would need to purchase expensive identification systems (either tattoos or ear tags) and keep track of and report every single trip away from your farm - to the vet, to the breeder, etc. While this might not sound like a terrible burden, a lot of people wondered if stricter rules wouldn't be imposed on how or where you could take an animal.

Well, the people spoke and spoke loudly. The USDA has changed the entire plan to basically just track interstate commerce of animals. Since we don't deal over state lines, looks like we are out of the loop on this one!

Read more from the NY Times article