I'll Give Up My Chicken When They Pry It From My Cold Dead Hands

(Editor's Note: Mr. Rubino's examination of the methods and motives of the government, in relation to their plans to control the source and nature of the food we eat, provides that ring of conspiracy that I am so intimately familiar with. After reading the description of one of his friends, I had to check my calendar to make sure it was not I that he dined with last week (all the way down to the choice of libations). For me, however, the idea that some twisted political miscreants came up with a plan to force us to rely on corporate agricultural behemoths like Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland (two of the largest lobbyists in Washington), for our sustenance, seems even more conspiratorial and outrageous than the consideration that 911 was an inside job (which you would have to be brain dead to dismiss as preposterous). The pandemic apathy that pervades the consciousness of our country blinds us from reality and prevents any national outrage over our condition. This evilness evidences the onslaught of the elimination of all markets, financial or otherwise.The truth will set you free, but first it will make you sick. - JSB)

Last week I had dinner with two friends, one of whom is what the mainstream would call a conspiracy nut. Over the course of a couple of hours and a bunch of margaritas he walked us through everything from the government's role in 9/11 to the FEMA internment camps to the surge in gun regulations, all of which are scary, but also mostly beyond my experience. I'm a finance guy who gets the monetary side of what's coming, but I don't own guns (yet) and have no first-hand knowledge of 9/11 or FEMA camps. So - while some or all of these things might be true - it was still a bit academic.

Then we got to something I could relate to: Apparently the U.S. is getting ready to require every citizen who owns even a single backyard chicken to register their livestock and implant them with a microchip that will allow both identification and tracking. The chicken (or goat or pig) owner will be required to notify the government when the animal is moved, say to the county fair 4-H barn. And when the animal dies the owner will have to fill out a form and submit it to the authorities within 24 hours. AND the owner will be required to register visitors to their property, whether they come into contact with the livestock or not.

This sounded too ridiculous to be real. The other conspiracies at least have plausible, if dark, rationales, like setting us up for a war, containing troublesome mobs of unemployed private sector workers, or putting gun owners under the thumb of the ATF. But why would a would-be dictator care about the neighbor's chickens?

So I googled NAIS, for National Animal Identification System, and discovered that it is indeed real, has been around for a while, and calls for pretty much everything mentioned above, though initially on a voluntary basis. See this 2005 article by Justin & Franklin Sanders of the The Money Changer newsletter.

NAIS' stated purpose - to be able to track animals back to their source in case of a disease outbreak - is something the USDA would obviously like to have, in the same way that the FBI would love to be able to monitor all telephone calls and emails without a warrant. But the downside of handing this kind of power to the government is so huge and so obvious that anybody with a sense of history has to suspect that the public rationale for NAIS is a smokescreen for some darker motive, of which several possibilities come to mind.

First, the per-animal cost of the chips and the paperwork (not to mention the loss of privacy) goes up exponentially as the number of animals per square meter goes down. So motive number one is clearly to enable big factory farmers and chip makers to squeeze fast-growing local farmers by raising their costs. NAIS will also make it harder for individuals to raise chickens for eggs or cows for milk, making consumers more reliant on the ag/industrial complex.

Meanwhile, people who keep animals and buy local produce also frequently own guns, and by and large would like to be left alone to pursue their own interests. Many of them own gold because they don't trust the government to protect their dollar savings. This is clearly a dangerously subversive subculture, and knowing where they are would be very helpful in case of a, ahem, public health crisis.

There's also the monetary angle. As Catherine Austin Fitts, whose Solari Network is doing great work in fields like financial freedom and sustainable communities, puts it:

"Oil is not sufficient to provide the backing for a global virtual currency. For that you need to control food; which means corporate ownership and control of seed and food production and distribution. NAIS is designed to help facilitate the roll up of control in the United States in the most economic manner."

And here's Ron Paul's take:

Stop the NAIS

The House of Representatives recently passed funding for a new federal mandate that threatens to put thousands of small farmers and ranchers out of business. The National Animal Identification System, known as NAIS, is an expensive and unnecessary federal program that requires owners of livestock - cattle, dairy, poultry, and even horses - to tag animals with electronic tracking devices. The intrusive monitoring system amounts to nothing more than a tax on livestock owners, allowing the federal government access to detailed information about their private property.

In typical Washington-speak, NAIS is "voluntary" - provided USDA bureaucrats are satisfied with the level of cooperation. Trust me, NAIS will be mandatory within a few years. When was the last time a new federal program did not expand once implemented?

As usual, Congress is spending millions of dollars creating a complex non-solution to a very simple problem. NAIS will cost taxpayers at least $33 million for starters.

Agribusiness giants support NAIS, because they want the federal government to create a livestock database and provide free industry data. But small and independent livestock owners face a costly mandate if NAIS becomes law.

Larger livestock operations will be able to tag whole groups of animals with one ID device. Smaller ranchers and farmers, however, will be forced to tag each individual animal, at a cost of anywhere from $3 to $20 per head. And NAIS applies to anyone with a single horse, pig, chicken, or goat in the backyard - no exceptions. NAIS applies to children in 4-H or FFA. Once NAIS becomes mandatory, any failure to report and tag an animal subjects the owner to $1,000 per day fines.

NAIS also forces livestock owners to comply with new paperwork and monitoring regulations. These farmers and ranchers literally will be paying for an assault on their property and privacy rights, as NAIS empowers federal agents to enter and seize property without a warrant - a blatant violation of the 4th amendment.

NAIS is not about preventing mad cow or other diseases. States already have animal identification systems in place, and virtually all stockyards issue health certificates. Since most contamination happens after animals have been sold, tracing them back to the farm or ranch that sold them won't help find the sources of disease.

More than anything, NAIS places our family farmers and ranchers at an economic disadvantage against agribusiness and overseas competition. As dairy farmer and rancher Bob Parker stated, NAIS is "too intrusive, too costly, and will be devastating to small farmers and ranchers."

NAIS means more government, more regulations, more fees, more federal spending, less privacy, and diminished property rights. It's exactly the kind of federal program every conservative, civil libertarian, animal lover, businessman, farmer, and rancher should oppose. The House has already acted, but there's still time to tell the Senate to dump NAIS. Please call your Senators and tell them you oppose spending even one dime on the NAIS program in the 2007 agriculture appropriations bill.

Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.

by John Rubino