Sold Out by Farm Bureau
(part 1 of 2)
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By Karin Bergener
Farm Bureau members who have asked what their Farm Bureau is doing to stop the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) are surprised to learn that Farm Bureau - at least the American Farm Bureau Foundation - supports the NAIS. If so many members are against the NAIS, how did Farm Bureau decide to support it? What can members do about it? Can Farm Bureau's policies be changed? If not, what does that mean for Farm Bureau members?
According to Farm Bureau's policy statement: "We support the establishment and implementation of a mandatory national animal identification system capable of providing support for animal disease control and eradication, as well as enhancing food safety. Only non-profit agricultural or meat/livestock organizations should have control of the animal ID program. Private 'for profit' companies should not control the program. Cost-sharing support from the federal government is important for development and implementation. The identification of animals should not be required until the animal is moved from the original registered premise [sic]. Producer information should be confidential and exempt under the Freedom of Information Act."
The introduction to this policy statement covers the USDA's legal basis for the NAIS, and the role of the states. It lists Farm Bureau's two concerns - cost and confidentiality - and adds a third, that the NAIS should protect producers from food adulteration claims.
Nothing about this statement is fuzzy or difficult to interpret. Farm Bureau wants a mandatory animal identification system. It wants taxpayers to shoulder the costs. It wants all information involving animal movements to be kept confidential.
This policy conflicts directly with other long-held American Farm Bureau policies. Two of those policies, as stated in Farm Bureau Policies for 2006, are: "individual freedom and opportunity must not be sacrificed in a quest for guaranteed security," and "property rights are among the human rights essential to the preservation of human freedom." How do these Farm Bureau policies square with a mandatory NAIS?
Early Participant
Farm Bureau has been involved in designing and building the NAIS for almost two decades. Its involvement began at least by the early 1990s. In a meeting on August 15, 2006, requested by concerned Illinois horse owner Don Shepherd and attended by Illinois state Senator Brad Burzynski and Representative Bob Pritchard, Jim Fraley (Livestock Program Director for Illinois Farm Bureau) stated that he'd "been developing this since 1994."
But the roots of Farm Bureau's involvement reach back even further. At the 1994 National Livestock Identification Symposium, Nancy Robinson (vice president for government and industry affairs of the Livestock Marketing Association) said that the mission of those attending, including Farm Bureau representative Kenneth Olson, was the same as it had been in 1988: "To evaluate current and potential identification procedures of various species and recommend options that will lead to increasing the percentage of animals uniquely identified, with immediate emphasis on identification in such a way as to permit tracing from a farm through slaughter, along with an aim toward standardization." Her statement makes clear that those attending the 1994 meeting already had been working together for six years.
Let's pause here to look at some of the players in this little drama. First is the National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA), which recommended the structure of the NAIS to USDA. Until 1999 the organization was known as Livestock Conservation Institute (LCI). In 2000 the NIAA was established and LCI merged with it. Farm Bureau, for this discussion, means the American Farm Bureau Federation, unless referred to by a particular state's name. Certain individual players stand out in the pro-NAIS crowd:
Consensus on Animal ID
Now let's go back to that 1994 technology conference. Nancy Robinson's remarks make clear that the attending organizations had long been involved in designing an animal identification system. The minutes, posted by NIAA, provide us a stake in the ground - they've been at it at least 12 years. At the end of the symposium Robinson led a discussion on what the components of an animal identification system would be. Kenneth Olson, on behalf of the American Farm Bureau, was among those speaking on the record.
Robinson challenged the group to come to a consensus on animal identification. The group complied. Among the aspects participants specified were that animal ID:
During the discussion Nancy Robinson asked, "Do we need a national ID system other than what we already have in place?" The minutes state, "YES - Audience agrees."
So what was left to develop or decide? Very little.
Farm Bureau was in from the beginning. Farm Bureau knew, by at least 1994 and likely well before then, what the large producers and government were advocating. Farm Bureau helped design the NAIS. Farm Bureau was an active participant and advocate.
Farm Bureau is not, as it implies to its members, just trying to help members follow government policies. Farm Bureau made the policies.
For a fun-filled afternoon, try tracing all the interwoven boards among the organizations involved in developing the NAIS, and how their staff move from one organization to another - a consultant one year, an employee of another company the next, and then a government worker. You already have a start with Farm Bureau's Jim Fraley and David Miller as members of the NIAA board of directors, to which you can add Jon Johnson of Texas Farm Bureau. Another prime example is Kevin Kirk, who began his career with Farm Bureau and is now NIAA treasurer and also the person responsible for implementing premises registration and mandatory radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on cattle, in his job with the Michigan Department of Agriculture, the beginning of NAIS in Michigan.
The same people appear year after year at NIAA meetings and the annual technology conference. It's a closed group of companies that stand to make huge fortunes on animal ID - microchip and software manufacturers, consultants, and database companies. No meaningful input from outsiders ever occurs; instead, the same people kept cycling among the organizations involved. As a member of this closely knit group, Farm Bureau was there from the beginning - not as an advocate for its independent farm members, but as an ally of multinational agribusinesses. Everyone in this group has been, as one anti-NAIS activist put it, "drinking the same Kool-Aid." The result is an unwavering dedication to implementing NAIS.
"Fringe groups need to be listened to, but they will not provide meaningful direction to the industry," said NIAA insider Dr. Holland of South Dakota. If the people making up NIAA have worked together for more than 15 years, without input from the outside - and not even Farm Bureau members were consulted when Farm Bureau established its NAIS policy - then we independent farmers and ranchers must appear to be on the far fringe.
Member Input
How, you have to wonder, did farmer-members of Farm Bureau become the fringe in NAIS development? The exact origin of the Farm Bureau's NAIS policies is unknown, but all Farm Bureau policies are supposed to start at the county chapter level. As one Nevada Farm Bureau staffer put it, this is the method "in principle" by which policies are created. By 2005, though, many state Farm Bureau organizations had resolutions on the NAIS, and in that year Illinois Farm Bureau amended its existing resolution to insert the word mandatory. An Iowa Farm Bureau staff person told Mark Miller, president of Iowa's Jackson County Farm Bureau, Illinois first raised up the resolution for a mandatory NAIS at the 2006 Farm Bureau annual meeting. In that meeting the word mandatory was inserted into the Farm Bureau policy on animal identification. As we now know, this insertion merely documented Farm Bureau's long-standing position. And a coercive, supposedly voluntary, system that's being implemented across the United States is fine with Farm Bureau.
"The only reason to do this animal ID thing is for the money," David White - executive director of the Ohio Livestock Coalition and the Ohio Farm Bureau's representative at an educational NAIS session in Hillsboro, Ohio - told an anti-NAIS activist. "They're going to get you to do it by strangling you at the slaughterhouse and the auction house," he added, without any indication that something might be amiss with this prediction for our future.
If you are a member of Farm Bureau, when did you first learn about NAIS? Was it from Farm Bureau? If so, did you find out before your state Farm Bureau voted on an animal identification resolution? Did Farm Bureau tell you it includes animals other than cattle? Or about all three aspects of the program - premises registration, individual tagging of multiple species, and tracking and reporting movements? That the costs are estimated to be almost $40/head in Australia and $60/head in the United Kingdom? Is your local Farm Bureau hosting "educational" sessions on the NAIS, and do they invite opponents to speak?
Has your local chapter mentioned that earlier this year Farm Bureau helped form a company to manage the databases? This nonprofit company, the United States Animal Identification Organization (USAIO) has on its board of directors Don Shawcroft, vice-president of the Colorado Farm Bureau. On March 1, 2006, USAIO, ViaTrace LLC, and Microsoft Corporation jointly announced the launch of an industry-led, multi-species animal tracking database to record movements of livestock from point of origin to processing.
Farm Bureau is in the thick of NAIS. Farm Bureau is helping build the NAIS infrastructure. Farm Bureau has, for a number of years, presented itself as a supporter of mandatory animal identification and made commitments to other members of USAIO to move forward on its plans.
So where are the state delegations and county Farm Bureau chapters? Left in the dust. Members across the country are angry. While some members try to make change from within, others may follow the example of the member who said, "I'm cutting up my membership card and mailing it to [president of Farm Bureau] Bob Stallman."
Each of us who is a member of Farm Bureau and against NAIS must make our own decision. I was a member of the board of my county Farm Bureau. I quit when I realized Farm Bureau would not take a position against NAIS and the rest of my fellow board members didn't even know what NAIS is. They were busy raising such issues as "We need better signage at railroad crossings." Not that signs at crossings aren't important, but if animal ID wipes us all out, we won't be driving teams down the road past those signs anyway.
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