Thinking men thinking deep thoughts

The U.S. Senate is determined to expedite the completion of the 2007 Farm Bill. The Senate named the 2007 Farm Bill Conference Committee. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin will Chair the Conference Committee.

Their phone and fax numbers are provided below. Please let them know that NAIS should not be a part of the Farm Bill.

I'll post the House side once it is announced.

The Senate Conference Committee members are:

Name	Phone	Fax
Tom Harkin (D-IA)	202-224-3254	202-224-9369
Max Baucus (D-MT)	202-224-2651	202-224-0515
Kent Conrad (D-ND)	202-224-2043	202-224-7776
Patrick Leahy (D-VT)	202-224-4242	202-224-3479
Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)	202-224-4843	202-228-1371
Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)	202-224-4822	202-228-0325
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)	202-224-3521	202-224-0103
Richard Lugar (R-IN)	202-224-4814	202-228-0360
Charles Grassley (R-IA)	202-224-3744	202-224-6020
Thad Cochran (R-MS)	202-224-5054	202-224-9450
Pat Roberts (R-KS)	202-224-4774	202-224-3514

USDA Releases Business Plan and New User's Guide

The draft NAIS Business Plan has been released. It was published in the December 19 Federal Register.

And, as if it couldn't get any worse, a New Users Guide also has been released. Isn't the USDA genius with their timing, just around the holidays when they figure everyone is too busy to pay attention?

Just one more tidbit for you. This change was found in the Senate version of the Farm Bill, the one they passed.

Strike Section 10305 of Livestock title and replace with this section: (a) Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall promulgate regulations consistent with the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. 552, et seq., regarding the disclosure of information submitted by farmers and ranchers who participate in the National Animal Identification System. The regulations promulgated, which shall be subject to a public comment period before finalizing, should address the protection of trade secrets and other proprietary and/or confidential business information that farmers and ranchers disclose in the course of participation in National Animal Identification System.

Listen up, you people. You better wake up before you find that there is no local food available. WAKE UP!!!

Farm Bill Secrecy Provision Threatens Journalists

More about the Secrecy in the Farm Bill. I am so glad to see groups jumping on this.

Written on November 5, 2007 by Mich

From Tim Wheeler
President, Society of Environmental Journalists

Once again, it seems we have another pending federal action that could affect how we gather and report the news. Buried within the 2007 Farm Bill now before the Senate is a new exemption to the Freedom of Information Act, which is troubling enough, but the same provision also makes it a crime for anyone to disclose or “use” anything from the National Animal Identification System. The penalties can be severe, and in our reading of the bill it’s not at all clear that reporters or their employers can’t be prosecuted for publishing or broadcasting such information — some of which is already publicly available through other means.

Because agriculture and food safety are major issues for many journalists covering the environment, SEJ plans to send a letter to senators urging them to remove this provision from the Farm Bill. Other groups, notably OpentheGovernment.org, are writing senators as well, but we felt it important to speak as journalists without potential entanglements with other interest groups. The bill is scheduled for a floor debate and vote within days, so unfortunately there’s not a lot of time. I’m attaching a draft of our letter, which likely will get tweaked before sending. If you’d like to sign on, or want more info, please get back to me promptly.

E-mail Tim

Download the DRAFT Letter HERE (PDF)

I cannot stand by and watch our family farmer's suffer - Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)

I've been watching the Farm Bill speeches on CSPAN2 since 3 o'clock this afternoon. I am nauseous. Talk about men without a clue.

Harkin was going on about the small farmer and the benefits of the Farmer's Market money included in this bloated bill. He painted a lovely picture of a family farmer having a free range flock of hens to sell their eggs at the farmer's market. I called his office pretty quick and left a message about how, under NAIS, there won't be many small farmers left.

It's all about HOPE, they keep saying, hope for the farmers and in spite of the fact that they keep using the family farmer as their example, they really mean Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.

"They live out in the country alone; it's them against the odds," said Dorgan (D-ND). "If it isn't about the family farm, we wouldn't need this bill."

Cripes, they know nothing.

In the meantime, here's a good article about Secrecy in the Farm Bill, talking about the FOIA exemption.

Secrecy in Farm Bill

By Rebecca Carr | Monday, November 5, 2007, 02:50 PM

You might think that the massive farm bill now on the table has nothing to do with government secrecy, but it does.

OpenTheGovernment.org, an umbrella organization of conservative and liberal organizations, discovered a provision in the measure that would create an exemption to the Freedom of Information Act for all records related to the Agriculture Department’s animal identification system.

The National Animal Identification System tracks sick animals through the system, among other things. It includes cows with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, commonly known as “mad cow,” disease.

Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org, is lobbying against the provision because it would “create an unnecessary bar” to finding out about the condition of animals in the nation’s food supply and how they are handled in the system.

“With food safety concerns on the rise, it doesn’t make sense that the public can’t find out if an animal is sick,” McDermott said.

Read the rest of it here. And leave a comment, please.

Farm Bill FOIA Bulloney - Farm Bill Alert! Take Action

October 23, 2007. Today the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee released its preliminary drafts of the Chairman's mark for all titles of the Senate's 2007 Farm Bill; the Committee markup of the bill is set for tomorrow, October 24, 2007, at 9:30 A.M. [Dear reader you must call Harkin's office and the office of every member on the Ag committee and protest this. Also make sure to tell them that the USDA does not have the authority under the Animal Health Protection Act to even implement NAIS. Find out your own Senator's contact information here. - Hen]

The draft of the livestock title contains a FOIA exemption for information in the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). (The FOIA exemption appears on pages 40 through 43 of the draft.) This proposed exemption flies in the face of all reasonable standards of open access to government. Since 2005, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the USDA has been collecting what the USDA itself calls "phone book" information on farms and other premises that
hold livestock in the United States. USDA/APHIS is presently maintaining this information in a database called the National Premises Information Repository in Fort Collins, Colorado. For each livestock location, the information consists of nothing more than basic contact information, i.e., the name of a contact person, an address, a telephone number, and in some cases an email address, and the species of livestock kept at that location.

Yet at the behest of industrial farming interests, the Senate Agriculture Committee sees fit to propose that this "phone book" information should receive a new exemption from the Freedom of Information Act. Even more alarming, the proposed exemption purports to override all state freedom of information laws that might pertain to similar records.

This proposed FOIA exemption for the commonplace contact information of livestock facilities flies in the face of the pending FOIA amendments of S. 849; those pending FOIA amendments would, inter alia, require that any legislation containing FOIA exemptions must specifically state that it contains an exemption to the disclosure normally required under the Freedom of Information Act. Yet the livestock title of the Senate Farm Bill sets forth what is in fact an unprecedented and unwarranted exemption to FOIA disclosure without once mentioning FOIA -- in other words, if S. 849 were already law, it would prohibit exactly the type of under-the-radar FOIA exemption being proposed in the Senate Farm Bill livestock title. This is
the more distressing for freedom-of-information advocates in that Senator Leahy, the main sponsor of S. 849, is also a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee

All friends of open government should protest the inclusion of Sec. 10305, "Protection of Information in the Animal Identification System," in the draft Senate farm bill and should demand that this provision be abandoned.

(The pertinent section of the draft bill is set forth below in its
entirety.)


Mary-Louise Zanoni
Attorney-at-Law
P.O. Box 501
5862 U.S. Highway 11
Canton, New York 13617
315-386-3199



Sec. 10305. Protection of Information in the Animal Identification System.

The Animal Health Protection Act (7 U.S.C. 8301 et seq.) is amended --

(1) by redesignating sections 10416 through 10418 as sections 10417 through 10419, respectively; and
(2) by inserting after section 10415 the following:

"Sec. 10416. Disclosure of Information Under a National Animal Identification System.

"(a) Definition of National Animal Identification System. -- In this section, the term 'national animal identification system' means a system for identifying or tracing animals that is established by the Secretary.

"(b) Protection from Disclosure. --

"(1) In general.--Information obtained through a national animal identification system shall not be disclosed except as provided in this section.

"(2) Use. -- Use of information described in paragraph (1) by any individual or entity except as otherwise provided in this section shall be considered a violation of this Act.

"(3) Waiver of Privilege of Protection. -- The provision of information to a national animal identification system under this section or the disclosure of information pursuant to this section shall not constitute a waiver of any applicable privilege or protection under Federal law, including protection of trade secrets.

"(c) Limited Release of Information. -- The Secretary may disclose information obtained through a national animal identification system if --

"(1) the Secretary determines that livestock may be threatened by a disease or pest;

"(2) the release of the information is related to an action the Secretary may take under this subtitle; and

"(3) the Secretary determines that the disclosure of the information to a government entity or person is necessary to assist the Secretary in carrying out this subtitle or a national animal identification system.

"(d) Required Disclosure of Information. -- The Secretary shall disclose information obtained through a national animal identification system regarding particular animals to --

"(1) the person that owns or controls the animals, if the person requests the information in writing;

"(2) the State Department of Agriculture for the purpose of the protection of animal health;

"(3) the Attorney General for the purpose of law enforcement;

"(4) the Secretary of Homeland Security for the purpose of homeland security;

"(5) the Secretary of Health and Human Services for the purpose of protecting public health;

"(6) an entity pursuant to an order of a court of competent jurisdiction; and

"(7) the government of a foreign country if disclosure of the information is necessary to trace animals that pose a disease or pest threat to livestock or a danger to human health, as determined by the Secretary.

"(e) Disclosure under State or Local Law. -- Any information relating to animal identification that a State or local government obtains from the Secretary shall not be made available by the State or local government pursuant to any State or local law requiring disclosure of information or records to the public.

"(f) Reporting requirement. -- To disclose information under this section, the Secretary shall --

"(1) certify that the disclosure was necessary under this section; and

"(2) submit to the Committee on Agriculture of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry of the Senate a copy of the certification.".

Farm Bill News

Yesterday the House Agriculture Committee farm bill and amendments were filed with the Rules Committee. Floor action is expected to begin tomorrow and continue until complete. The "compromise" negotiated between National Farmers Union (NFU) and the anti-COOL coalition has been finalized.

NAIS was stripped from the farm bill! That's why my horse (wearing a mask for anonymity) is smiling.

That pesky Section 123 that would have stripped states of their rights was stripped from the bill weeks ago!

If you feel moved to do so, please call House Ag Committee Chairman Representative Collin Peterson and Representative Bob Goodlatte (Virginia) and thank them for their hard work.

It isn't over yet, not by a long shot. It goes to the full House for debate tomorrow. Anything could happen there. After that we start all over with the Senate.

The whole Farm Bill is over 600 pages. I doubt anyone has read every word of every page. DownsizeDC.org has been pushing for the Read the Bills act for sometime. If there really were a law like that, nothing could get done in Congress.

Sorry I haven't posted in a couple of months. I've been fighting NAIS for 2 years and was starting to become discouraged. This news sees me perked up.

40 words in Farm Bill remove state's rights - You better make your voice heard on this one

Folks,

Of late things in Washington have been moving fast, too fast for a Congress that does not read the bills they pass. Certain people want certain outcomes in the Farm Bill, like making NAIS mandatory while requiring Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) and other legislation. Those certain people seem to be the ones who have so much power that there is no official oversight to their doings. Read this and see what I mean. [I've added my emphasis]

Provision would strip States of Control

The House Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry passed on the full committee on Thursday a briefly-worded provision that could have huge ramifications for the abilities of state and local governments to effectively oversee anything involving agriculture.

[This takes away states rights to make decisions regarding agriculture - anything USDA wants USDA is going to get]

Under the heading Miscellaneous Provisions, Sec. 123 USDA Inspection and Determination of Non-Regulated Status, the subcommittee approved a provision that would ban a state or locality from "prohibiting an article the Secretary of Agriculture [ Mike Johanns] has inspected and passed, or an article the Secretary has determined to be of non-regulated status."

The provision passed on to the full committee without discussion.[Without discussion?]

It's a brief statement that, based on the interpretation, could prevent a state from establishing rules tighter than USDA or protecting the interests of local producers. It would seem as well the tiny provision would also tell states they don't have any right adopt food-safety or recall standards.

This proposed restriction on the rights of states is being offered at the same time dozens of lawmakers are pushing to allow state-inspected meat to be sold across the country. So on one hand, Congress is trying to clamp down on they way a state can regulate and on the other hand, Congress wants to give states more authority over meat inspections. [A la Hydra the many headed serpent]

The Center for Food Safety was about the only group to challenge the intent of this proposal. The center stated in a news alert that the provision appears to be aimed at enacted state laws that restrict the planting of genetically engineered crops. Further, the provision could prohibit states from taking action when food contamination cases occur, the center pointed out.

This biotech battle in a variety of states. Some, such as Iowa, Nebraska and others have passed legislation making sure local counties cannot adopt their own biotech planting bans. Voters in at least four California counties passed such measures, leading biotech seed and chemical companies to go into action and get lawmakers to make sure such bans could not occur in major biotech crop states.

Still, states in recent years have had to take action to protect the interests of markets, even when USDA has approved a product. Rice, in particular, comes to mind. Lawmakers in Arkansas, Missouri and California have created legislation against biotech rice because USDA approved a product that, if grown, would have caused major international or domestic commodity buyers to stop buying rice from those states. In other situations, USDA regulators didn't do enough to ensure companies prevented the spread of an unapproved product into the general crop planting. Arkansas, not exactly a bastion of liberal, locally-grown, organic consumerism, had to take action because two of its best varieties of long-grain rice were contaminated. European countries have continued to kick back shipments because of that.

It's not known at this point why this provision was added or ended up in the purview of a subcommittee on livestock, poultry or dairy. But if such a law is needed and would effectively strip authority from states and counties to follow the wishes of voters or the needs of their farmers, then shouldn't such a proposal demand a hearing, open debate and discussion before Congress offers a new, broad power to the Secretary of Agriculture with fewer than 40 words in the farm bill? [Can't you just read the headline? "Agriculture Czar Johanns said today...".

#####

Can you sense the duplicity in Washington, DC? Who is keeping your best interests at heart? Sadly the answer is NO ONE. The Farm Bill is being decided by revolving door, business to government agency bureaucrats. Iraq is just a distraction while those in Congress are taking away your rights. They just took away state's rights to decide on agriculture issues for their counties and towns, Who gets to set policy for states if the Farm Bill passes? The USDA's Secretary of Agriculture. Mike Johanns.

They call it cooked frog syndrome. If you put a frog in a pot of water and slowly turn up the heat, the frog never realizes the water is getting hotter to kill him.

Oh, right, why should you care about this? This means no state or locality can ban risky products when the federal government has failed to act to protect our health or the environment. The primary intent of this passage is to deny local or state rights to regulate
genetically engineered crops or food.

The biotech industry and big agribusiness have been trying to push similar bills in dozens of states across the country, and also at the Federal level with last year's so-called "Food Uniformity" bill. Now they want to sneak it into a committee hearing and hide it in the Farm Bill.
Like Paul Revere, I sound a warning. An urgent warning...Your government is being stolen by Democrats and Republicans alike who do not remember why they are in office and, certainly, can't recall their oaths of office.

People, everywhere, government is taking a serious turn. We have just got to wake everyone up.

Those of you who read this, please, please, please, reflect and ask God to bless you with insight, with clarity, with eyes to see, eats to hear, hearts to understand and act on in His will for you in this fight to keep our country.

Take Action Now! You can make a difference. You must help us make a difference. Email me and I will provide you with contact information for the subcommittee.

It's not for you and me that I work against these issues. No. It is for your children's children. The world is going to be lost for them if we don't get things straightened out now.