The U.S. Department of Agriculture has created a program called the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) which will soon require anyone who owns even one of any of the following animals – horses, cows, goats, sheep, poultry, swine, lamas, alpacas, bison, elk and deer – to identify their animals with a 15-character tag, microchip, or RFID, ostensibly for the purpose of tracking disease.

NAIS is not a bill but a regulation.

Even though Maine has put its similar system on hold, it is only waiting for the USDA to implement the program to force small farmers to comply with the directives.

The impact of the NAIS on the local small farmers would be devastating. Every horse, cow, chicken, goat, sheep, alpaca, duck or any other farm animal in the country would be chipped, tracked with a satellite through global positioning system registration of your home, and accounted for, at your expense.

If your goat dies, you must report it to the government within 48 hours or face a $500 fine. If you have a few lambs to sell, they must all be chipped, reported and tracked. Every single 4-H and FFA member would have to file a report every time they took an animal to a show.

If you ride your horse off your own property, it must be reported. NAIS will effectively cost you the freedom to take your horses to ride with your friends on a simple trail ride. It would curtail traveling across the state to enter competitive events with animals. This issue affects friends, neighbors, family and every livestock owner in the entire state – the entire nation – if this invasive regulation is not stopped dead in its tracks.

I am concerned that the national animal ID system is too invasive into people’s lives. If the real purpose of NAIS is to track the food supply for instances like mad cow disease then:

(1) NAIS is not necessary for horses, donkeys, guardian animals or other nonfood animals – these animals are not going to enter the human food chain in our country and should not be tracked by the government.

(2) NAIS is not necessary for sales direct to the consumer from the farm. In these cases there is already far better tracking of the food chain. If a small farmer breeds and raises his own pigs and sheep and sells directly to the consumer, then the consumer, his customer, knows exactly where their food came from.

3 NAIS should not be at all involved with people who are raising livestock for their own family consumption. They know exactly where the food came from – they raised it. There is no need to have any government involved in our kitchens and back yard food-raising.

It appears the huge agri-business producers wish to force the backyard livestock grower completely out of the picture so they can profit from having a monopoly on the food supply.

NAIS is being implemented too broadly. To include the above three groups suggests the government has ulterior motives and is trying to invade people’s privacy. If this system is ever implemented at all, there should be permanent exemptions for the above three groups.

Why is the USDA pushing a system that is going to kill off small producers? Why would they push a system that will make it so homesteaders won’t even be able to legally and affordably raise their own meat? Who will benefit from these regulations?

The only entities which seem somewhat spared by this new plan are the largest multinational confinement livestock operations which will be required only to register the holding facility and not individual animals. And those electronically sensitive microchips? They are being built and sold by several of the co-authors of this NAIS plan.

Why would Monsanto and Cargill and the other corporate farming interest be so insistent on ramming their animal ID program through, one state at a time, until this hits the federal level? Follow the money trail.

I urge readers to take action against the horrible invasion of privacy which will devastate our rural states and our small farmers and homesteaders.

Visit http://nonais.org to find out more information and how you can take further action to prevent this massive invasion of privacy.

Sue Santore is a fifth-grade teacher at Sedomocha Middle School in Dover-Foxcroft. Her e-mail address is ss@midmaine.com.