NAIS "How To Handbook" Discovery

USDA Internal Handbook Advises Animal-Identification Staff to Address Farmers “at the Sixth Grade Level”

The USDA’s confidential “NAIS How-To Handbook,” intended for non-public distribution to Federal and State NAIS personnel, reveals an aggressive campaign to implement NAIS in the face of farmer opposition by strictly controlling communications, manipulating media coverage, concealing the original NAIS program documents, and discrediting opponents.

by

Mary Zanoni, Ph.D., J.D.
P.O. Box 501
Canton, NY 13617

315-386-3199

mlz@slic.com


March 29, 2007

A USDA “NAIS (National Animal Identification System) How-To Handbook,” most recently revised in February 2007, instructs all State and Federal NAIS staff aggressively to promote the supposedly “voluntary” premises ID program. The goal of the campaign and the How-To Handbook is to “increase . . . premises registration results” and to promote during 2007 not only “continued growth in premises registration,” but also the “adoption of animal ID and tracing.” (Handbook, p. 1; USDA’s NAIS Community Outreach bulletin, Feb. 2007, p. 1.)

The Handbook demands uniformity and strict adherence to four “key messages” that staff are to present to audiences of farmers when promoting NAIS. As described by the USDA, these “key messages” “are organized into topic categories and supported with concise sentences. They are designed for an audience reading at the sixth grade level.” (Handbook, p. 41.)

The Handbook originally was designed for a meeting in Kansas City in late October 2006, attended by a total of 132 “State ID Coordinators, Federal ID Coordinators, and members of various livestock industry associations.” (NAIS Community Outreach bulletin, Dec. 2006, p. 1.) The meeting was designed to train all NAIS personnel to adhere strictly to “a communications campaign currently being implemented at the National level.” (Handbook, p. 3.) After the original USDA mandatory NAIS plan, set forth in the Draft Strategic Plan and Draft Program Standards of April 2005, met with an unexpected level of strong opposition from farmers and animal owners, the USDA hired a public-relations firm to analyze the opposition and repackage NAIS with a more congenial-sounding message. (Presentation by Dore Mobley, USDA/APHIS information officer, at the National Institute for Animal Agriculture’s “ID Expo,” August 2006.)

The apparent upshot of the professional public-relations advice was USDA’s completely new marketing campaign for NAIS, implemented in the fall of 2006. Crucial components of the marketing campaign included the Oct. 2006 Kansas City meeting, the Handbook and related promotional materials, and the release of the “NAIS User Guide” in November 2006.

When the USDA launched its new public-relations campaign for NAIS in the fall of 2006, the agency at the same time removed from its website the original NAIS documents, i.e., the Draft Strategic Plan and Draft Program Standards of April 2005. The common criticism of NAIS as “Orwellian” relies in significant part upon the USDA’s expungement of the Draft Strategic Plan and Draft Program Standards from the USDA site. The November 2006 “User Guide” stated that it superseded all previous program documents for NAIS. (User Guide, front cover.)

The “new” NAIS approach: emphasize “voluntary,” but aggressively pursue the maximum number of premises IDs and prepare for individual animal ID and animal tracking. The declared purpose of the Handbook is to “increase . . . premises registration results” (p. 1). Its primary goal is to “contribute significantly toward NAIS premises registration totals,” and reach “NAIS premises registration goals” (p. 4). Animal ID staff are told to emphasize “which messages hit home,” that is, which messages increase premises registration (p. 6). Staff are told to avoid wasting effort on strongly anti-NAIS audiences and instead direct effort toward “On The Fence” or “Pro-NAIS” “targets,” to maximize the number of premises signed up (pp. 7-8). Staff are advised not to “invest[ ] time” in “Anti-NAIS producers” and instead “locate and motivate more favorable individuals” (p. 9). While staff are to tell farmers that participation in premises ID will not compel them to participate in either individual animal ID or animal tracking (Handbook, p. 42), at the same time, staff are to pursue the second and third components of NAIS, “adoption of animal ID and tracing,” during 2007. (NAIS Outreach bulletin, Feb. 2007, p. 1).

USDA promulgates a unified, monolithic message to be used by all NAIS staff. The main purpose of the Kansas City meeting, the Handbook, and the USDA-promulgated advertising and outreach materials has been to focus the NAIS State and Federal staff on a consistent strategy and to prevent staff departures from the USDA-mandated NAIS “message.” As the USDA tells Federal and State NAIS staff, “The Handbook is designed to complement a communications campaign currently being implemented at the National level” (p. 3). The goal is to “change the perceptions of individuals who may be misinformed or confused about the details of the NAIS program.” Staff must use “uniform messages” (p. 4) and carefully follow the instructions on the “APHIS-led communication and information network” (p. 5). Federal and State NAIS staff must conform to “the key messages USDA will use at the national level” (p. 12). “USDA spokespersons are using the messages provided in the Appendix [of the Handbook] to provide consistent information at the national and local level. These messages will be used in speeches, print materials, media interviews and elsewhere” (p. 14). With apparent unconscious irony, at the very time the USDA is enforcing staff adherence to the precise assigned “messages,” the agency simultaneously acknowledges that a common objection voiced by farmers to NAIS is that the program “sounds like Big Brother government” (p. 7). Should it appear that all government presentations on NAIS are beginning to sound alike -- well, they are all alike, precisely alike, and it’s by careful design.

USDA instructs Federal and State staff on how to manipulate media coverage of NAIS. The USDA makes clear to NAIS staff that spontaneous responses to the media are not acceptable. As to Federal NAIS employees, we are told, “Federal staff are not authorized to handle media interviews.” Federal staff must refer all media matters to the USDA Legislative and Public Affairs Office (p. 16). Staff are encouraged, however, to use such controlled channels as op-ed pieces, letters to the editor to correct “misinformation,” and canned interviews with experts; the USDA urges staff to rely on the “complete message control” available by communicating through a NAIS website (p. 17). The properly authorized expert communications staff are encouraged to pitch canned pro-NAIS stories to the media, to attempt to influence media editorial content through attending editorial board meetings, and to compose “opinion pieces” “to explain the value of premises registration” (p. 19).

USDA reveals results of its NAIS “Opposition Analysis” and creates standardized responses to the NAIS opposition. The NAIS How-To Handbook’s treatment of the “NAIS Opposition” carefully portrays this opposition as nameless and faceless, and avoids specifying the exact points upon which the opposition arguments are based. The USDA implies that the opposition consists of insignificant “groups and individuals” who are just somehow “mistaken”: “The opposition’s information is largely based on misinformation and misunderstanding, but their zeal and emotion appeal is real” (p. 22).

Although the USDA studiously avoids naming its NAIS opponents, in fact they include: a growing list of groups such as the Northeast Organic Farming Association, R-CALF, the Sierra Club, Food and Water Watch, the National Family Farm Coalition, Family Farm Defenders, Community Farm Alliance of Kentucky, Rural Vermont, Cattle Producers of Washington, South Dakota Stockgrowers Association, Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association. Some of these groups have sponsored the introduction of antiNAIS legislation in at least 9 states in the 2007 legislative session. Similarly, the unspecified “individuals” opposed to the USDA’s implementation of NAIS in fact include medical doctors, information-technology professionals, financial planners, entrepreneurs, lawyers, public-interest lobbyists, and former government employees.

The USDA’s Handbook repeatedly refers to NAIS opponents' “misinformation,” but fails to specify any statement of the opponents that is other than completely accurate. The USDA’s most detailed list of “opposition” statements, on pp. 23-24 of the Handbook, dates from January through August 2006 and does not identify any specific individuals as sources for the statements. The websites from which the statements are taken permit comments and postings by visitors, and the USDA’s quotations are not attributed to random visitors, more formal opposition statements, or any other particular source. One statement, the last under “Theme 3: Civil Liberties” (p. 23), obviously refers to the Real ID Act (a common ancillary topic of discussion on many NAIS opposition sites), and not to NAIS at all. Indeed, nearly all the statements the USDA quotes under “Opposition Themes” (pp. 23-24) are in fact quite accurate for their time frame of Jan. - Aug. 2006. During those months, the operative NAIS documents were the Draft Strategic Plan and Draft Program Standards, which did indeed impose a fully mandatory NAIS by 2008/2009 and did indeed require the participation of all common livestock species, the microchip or RFID individual identification of nearly all animals except factory-farm chickens and pigs, and the reporting of all animal “movements” and changes of status (birth, death, sale, purchase, slaughter, and all travel off-premises) within 24 hours. Only in subsequent documents did the USDA begin to waver as to some of the original requirements of the Draft Strategic Plan. And not until the USDA’s release of the User Guide in November 2006 did the USDA’s stated policy become “voluntary” rather than “mandatory” NAIS.

Even the USDA’s most comprehensive public-relations campaign can’t sell a bad NAIS system to justly skeptical farmers. The USDA’s Handbook, like its User Guide and its present NAIS approach generally, repeatedly speaks of needing to “correct” or adjust farmers’ attitudes or beliefs about NAIS. Why doesn’t the USDA actually examine the possible flaws in the design, the reasoning of, and the justification for NAIS, and abandon this unwanted and unwarranted intrusion of bureaucracy and technocracy into the lives of farmers and animal owners? Why is the USDA, as is so obvious throughout the Handbook, concerned only with appearance or “perception,” and not with reality?

For all that the USDA may think that farmers function “at the sixth grade level” (Handbook, p. 41), farmers seem to be just too smart to be lured by even the USDA’s most prettily baited NAIS hook. In January 2007, the USDA conducted NAIS “focus groups” in Sacramento, California, Springfield, Missouri, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (NAIS Community Outreach bulletin, March 2007, p. 1.) The participants in the “focus groups” were all livestock producers. The purpose of the “focus groups” was to gauge farmers’ responses to elements of the unified USDA NAIS public-relations campaign, particularly, the new NAIS promotional brochures and the USDA-imposed “key messages” for promoting NAIS. These farmers thus received only the USDA pro-NAIS messages and no “opposition” information. By the USDA’s own admission, these farmers, even after intensive exposure to the USDA’s well orchestrated campaign, would not accept premises registration. The USDA’s “key findings” about the attitudes of the focus-group farmers after they had received the USDA’s (and only the USDA’s) side of the NAIS story are:

“Respondents view NAIS as unwanted government intervention.”
“Current NAIS messaging and brochures will not necessarily motivate producers to register premises.”

So, after several years and multiple millions of dollars’ worth of pro-NAIS propaganda, farmers still want no part of NAIS. Perhaps the USDA should begin to entertain the notion that farmers might not be so “misinformed” after all. Maybe farmers are simply justifiably mistrustful of a government agency that insists on treating the very people it is supposed to serve like children.

Senator Brent Steele of Indiana Betrays Farmers

An urgent alert from Mary Zanoni:

Please make people aware of a big problem in Indiana. The sponsor of what was once an antiNAIS bill has today offered an amendment that would make it a pro-NAIS bill. People must be told that the amendment (or the bill as amended) must not be permitted to pass.

On Mon. 2/19, the Indiana Senate Ag & Small Business Committee voted out to the full Senate a bill that at the time was an anti-NAIS bill -- the bill was originally sponsored by Brent Steele (R-44th Dist.) and the text as introduced and as voted out of committee would have essentially stopped the Indiana Board of Animal Health from continuing with their mandatory premises
ID program.

I received a forward of an e-mail dated Tues. 2/20 from Steve Bonney, president of an Indiana small-farming organization called Sustainable Earth, expressing happiness over the bill passing out of committee and urging people to contact senators to get them to vote for the bill.

However, today, there is a very, very ominous development on this bill. The sponsor himself, Senator Steele, has moved to amend the bill into a PRO-NAIS bill. I have spoken to Steve Bonney of Sustainable Earth and he reports that the state vet and the lone member of the Ag Committee who would not support the original bill "got to" sponsor Steele and made him offer the pro-NAIS amendment. According to Steve Bonney, at present all people can do is to urge Sen. Steele to withdraw the amendment to SB 486; (Sen. Steele's phone numbers are 317-232-9400 or 800-382-9467) or else, to tell their own senators to vote against the amended bill.

Below is the link to and text of the amendment. The amendment gives Indiana BOAH the green light for their mandatory premises ID and also sets the stage for them to conduct a coerced "voluntary" animal ID and animal tracking.

http://www.in.gov/legislative/bills/2007/SAMF/MO048603.001.html

SB 486-1_ Filed 02/22/2007, 09:01 Steele

SENATE MOTION

MADAM PRESIDENT:

I move that Senate Bill 486 be amended to read as follows:

Delete everything after the enacting clause and insert the following:

SOURCE: IC 15-2.1-18-24; (07)MO048603.1. --> SECTION 1. IC 15-2.1-18-24
IS ADDED TO THE INDIANA CODE AS A NEW SECTION TO READ AS FOLLOWS [EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2007]: Sec. 24. (a) As used in this section, "NAIS" refers to the
USDA's National Animal Identification System or any component thereof, including:
(1) premises or property identification by numbers (Stage I);
(2) animal identification (Stage II); and
(3) tracking or surveillance of domesticated animals (Stage III).
(b) As used in this section, "USDA" refers to the United States
Department of Agriculture, and any successor agency within the federal
government.
(c) The state may not require participation in the livestock
identification (Stage II) or tracking components (Stage III) of the USDA's
National Animal Identification System.
(d) The state may not withhold indemnity as provided under section 14 of
this chapter if a person does not participate in NAIS.
(Reference is to SB 486 as printed February 21, 2007.)

Use this link to email Senator Steele http://www.in.gov/cgi-bin/legislative/contact/contact.pl?data=Senate|Steele,Brent|s44|sr

Defining Controlled Opposition

An Open Letter to the NAIS Opposition Community
by
Mary Zanoni
P.O. Box 501
Canton, New York 13617
315-386-3199
mlz@slic.com

Does a Secret Pro-Corporate Agenda Intend to Co-opt the Anti-NAIS Movement?
Who Are the Real "Leaders" Behind Liberty Ark/FARFA?

A Sad Story of Concealed Interests; but With a Hopeful Ending

Many of us who are most strongly opposed to NAIS have noticed that Liberty Ark/FARFA and their de facto leaders, Henry Lamb, Judith McGeary, and Karin Bergener, have taken every opportunity: (1) to promote the type of "voluntary" system specified in the NAIS User Guide, which, as we know too well, inevitably will lead to a mandatory system; and (2) to quiet and blunt the NAIS opposition by touting the supposed "importance" of insignificant minor "victories" against NAIS, many of which are not "victories" at all, but just steps that bring us closer to NAIS.

Most in the antiNAIS community probably do not understand the concealed connections and actions of the main people working on behalf of Liberty Ark/FARFA. Karin Bergener of Liberty Ark works for a company called SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation). SAIC is a prominent federal government contractor, the developer of the national DNA database and the gun-purchase background-check database. As described on its website, www.saic.com, SAIC also works in the areas of data-mining and biometric identification. SAIC has been a member of the National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA), presumably because its product lines could be applied to animal identification. As we well know, NIAA has been the driving force behind the development and promotion of a fully mandatory NAIS. Henry Lamb is very much involved in Liberty Ark, but his name appears nowhere on their Steering Committee. In the past, Henry Lamb's various organizations have been funded and supported by the American Farm Bureau Federation. ( www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1997/12/gw_chart.html) Farm Bureau has been a relentless supporter of a mandatory NAIS. Judith McGeary consistently has supported a "voluntary" government-run NAIS program (such as that the USDA itself now promotes in the User Guide); she has chosen to have her own horses microchipped. As discussed below, McGeary, while sometimes trying to present herself as a proponent of "sustainable" agriculture, has, along with Bergener, secretly embraced support and funding from the anti-environmentalist Lamb.

All this is not to say that these people may not "oppose" NAIS on some level and for some motives; the question is the degree of their opposition, and the authenticity of their motives. NAIS is the very model of how an unresponsive Executive Branch agency can cooperate with a globalist industrial agriculture and a technocratic corporate elite to force an undesired program upon an unwilling populace. So ask yourself whether people aligned with those selfsame industrial/corporate interests are likely to be legitimate opponents of NAIS.

McGeary Supports "Voluntary" Government-Imposed NAIS

Judith McGeary of FARFA and Liberty Ark has made frequent on-the-record statements in support of a "voluntary" government-run NAIS. She testified on September 6, 2006 before the Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) that FARFA does not oppose a "voluntary" NAIS program. (http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlodocs/793/minutes/html/C5852006090610001.HTM ) In written testimony to a Texas Senate Subcommittee, McGeary stated, in response to a question concerning the viability of a "voluntary" Texas NAIS pending the implementation of a national NAIS, "FARFA does not oppose a voluntary state program." (Texas Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Affairs, and Coastal Resources, September 6, 2006.) An Austin Chronicle article quoted McGeary as willing to settle for a "compromise" that would create a government-imposed "voluntary" NAIS: "McGeary . . . in negotiations with the TAHC [regarding NAIS] hopes to reach a compromise wherein small operations can comply voluntarily or be exempted altogether." ( http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=oid%3A344517 )

Of course, we in the NAIS opposition community know all too well from the USDA's User Guide for NAIS, and from the actions of various states in forcing farmers into NAIS without their knowledge or consent in the guise of a "voluntary" program, that a "voluntary" NAIS cannot be tolerated, and is not consistent with the positions of groups completely opposed to NAIS, such as the Northeast Organic Farming Association – Massachusetts, Rural Vermont, or the Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association.

McGeary and the Massachusetts Coordinator of Liberty Ark Worked Diligently to Weaken State Legislation

In Massachusetts, Northeast Organic Farming Association/Massachusetts (NOFA/Mass) antiNAIS activists Ben Grosscup and Jack Kittredge were just on the verge of approaching their legislators with antiNAIS legislation to bar completely the Massachusetts premises ID program and allow Massachusetts farmers who had been unjustly placed in premises ID to get their information removed from the database. At this crucial moment, without the knowledge of Jack and Ben, Liberty Ark's Massachusetts State Coordinator, Pat Stewart, gave legislators a bill that would have established a "voluntary" state-run NAIS. (The truly harmful nature of such legislation is evident from the fact that Massachusetts presently has NO statutory authorization for any state-level NAIS.) When faced with Stewart's submission, the legislators, at that point unfamiliar with all the nuances of the NAIS fight, were on the verge of accepting this Liberty Ark pro-voluntary NAIS bill for filing. Fortunately, Ben and Jack really stepped up to the plate for all of us, fought hard to get their stop-NAIS bill filed instead, and thought they had this struggle behind them. But then Judith McGeary of FARFA/Liberty Ark contacted Ben and Jack repeatedly, insisting that they accept at least some part of the pro-voluntary NAIS Liberty Ark legislation. (One of McGeary's objectives was to get the word "sustainable" removed from the bill's title; Lamb and his ilk are outspoken enemies of "sustainability," claiming that the concept is some nefarious plot hatched by "environmentalists.")

Ben and Jack solidly stood their ground and rejected any weakening of the NOFA/Mass bill and made sure their legislators in both chambers would file the NOFA/Mass strong antiNAIS bill. Then Pat Stewart of Liberty Ark, again without telling Ben and Jack, approached a Senate aide with what she claimed was a "compromise" bill. (Remember, Ben and Jack had held their ground and refused to weaken the NOFA/Mass bill, so there never was any "compromise" version of a bill.) In the confusion of the last-minute deadline for filing bills, Stewart somehow got the weak Liberty Ark bill filed. Now NOFA/Mass had to work doubly hard to clean up the confusion and make sure the strong NOFA/Mass bill had been filed properly in both houses of the legislature.

In light of these events, one must ask, why would Judith McGeary and Pat Stewart deliberately work to introduce pro-voluntary NAIS legislation in Massachusetts (a state with NO statutory authority for any version of NAIS), and why would they be so insistent on promoting the weakened legislation, that they would use less-than-open tactics to get it filed?

Henry Lamb and the Early History of Liberty Ark

In early March of 2006, Henry Lamb called me and said that he wanted to sponsor and fund a national group to oppose NAIS. He wanted me to be the leader of this group. He asked me for the names of any people I thought might be suitable to be members of a steering committee for such a group; I suggested Judith McGeary and Karin Bergener, each of whom had independently contacted me and expressed their interest in opposing NAIS. I gave Lamb, Bergener, and McGeary one another's contact information and Lamb began organizing a series of conference calls for the group to discuss forming the organization that came to be called Liberty Ark.

My first contact with Lamb had taken place a couple of months earlier, when he had asked me if he could reprint one of my early antiNAIS articles in his "Ecologic" magazine. I had never heard of Lamb and, assuming that this was some small ecology publication, I gave him permission for the reprint. Now, in the larger context of the possible formation of Liberty Ark, I was motivated to look more deeply into Lamb's publications and other activities. It turned out that Lamb's magazine is in fact not an ecology publication at all, but rather, the opposite – a virulent anti-environmental publication. Lamb himself is best known as a voice for the corporate interests of polluting industries, working to defeat initiatives that would promote clean and livable rural areas for the good of the average people.
( www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1997/12/gw_chart.html)

As Bergener, McGeary, Lamb, and I continued to discuss the formation of Liberty Ark, Lamb added his son to the group. Meanwhile, I was also taking part in separate conversations among Bergener, McGeary, and myself, in which I was expressing growing misgivings about Lamb's motives for forming the group in general, and in particular, my fear that Lamb would use Liberty Ark to co-opt the antiNAIS movement into nothing more than an appendage of the pro-corporate, anti-environmental agenda. However, Bergener and McGeary insisted that Lamb's backing and funding were necessary to the group.

Just as the Liberty Ark website was about to be launched, Lamb told us in a conference call that he was not going to permit his name to be used publicly on the Liberty Ark website as one of the members of the steering committee (albeit he was going to continue to be the funding behind the organization). After that call, I resigned from the Liberty Ark steering committee and severed ties with the group, because I was not willing to participate in any venture that was not revealing the identities of all the persons behind it.

Henry Lamb's sponsorship of Liberty Ark is confirmed in public documents. If you do a "who is" look-up on www.register.com for libertyark.net , you will find that the Liberty Ark website is owned by a Tennessee company called Earth Work, Inc. In turn, if you search the Tennessee Secretary of State's corporate records for Earth Work, Inc., you will find that it is a for-profit corporation and that the registered agent for Earth Work, Inc. is Henry Lamb, 175 Shepard Cemetery Lane, Hollow Rock, Tennessee. (In case these records may be changed in the future to obscure the relationship, alternate sources of these pages are being maintained.)
The Talent/Emerson Bill and the Misleading of Missourians

During last fall's Congressional elections, the Senate seat in Missouri was very closely contested, with former Republican Senator Jim Talent ultimately losing to Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill by a thin margin. Missouri is a hotbed of opposition to NAIS and NAIS was definitely an issue in the Senate race. McCaskill, whose family business was a local feed mill and who therefore had ties to local and small-scale agriculture, consistently opposed NAIS from the beginning of her campaign. Talent, on the other hand, had developed ties to corporate and industrial agriculture during his incumbency and had been primarily a supporter of NAIS before the election. However, as the election season progressed, Talent began to take an ostensible position against NAIS. In early September, Talent suddenly introduced in the Senate legislation that would have given the green light to the USDA's establishment of a "voluntary" federal NAIS (remember, there has never been, and there is not to this day, any federal statute that actually authorizes ANY element or form of NAIS). Also, Talent's NAIS legislation would have been a frontal assault on the citizens' right to know, because it would have prevented federal freedom-of-information disclosure to citizens of information related to NAIS and also, in an outrageous assault on the autonomy of state freedom of information laws, would have prohibited states from allowing disclosure of state information under their own state laws. (109th Congress, S. 3862; companion House bill introduced by Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, H.R. 6042.)

Thus, it appeared that the Talent NAIS legislation was deliberately designed to offer false appeasement to potential Missouri antiNAIS voters, while actually facilitating the USDA's development of NAIS. In sum, the Talent bill was pro-NAIS, and was recognized as such by many of Liberty Ark's own state coordinators, by the antiNAIS organization Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association (VICFA, www.vicfa.net) and their legislative counsel, and by me, among many others. Nonetheless, Liberty Ark insisted upon promoting the bill with press releases and an action alert urging their followers to contact legislators in support of the bill. Not surprisingly (now that you know Lamb founded and funds Liberty Ark), Henry Lamb "independently" promoted the Talent bill and for good measure threw in fulsome praise for Liberty Ark (without, of course, ever revealing that he is the force that created and maintains Liberty Ark). (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51996)

Liberty Ark, Bergener, and McGeary deliberately supported the Talent bill even though they were well aware of the terrible consequences if the bill should pass (thankfully, it didn't) – namely, the bill's potential to create the first-ever federal statutory authority for NAIS and its insults to citizens' rights to government information. Because Bergener and McGeary insisted on supporting the Talent bill against all objections, four of Liberty Ark's strongest state coordinators resigned over this incident. (Nonetheless, Liberty Ark, in its obsession with creating a misleading impression of its own influence – an obsession discussed in greater detail below – to this day has failed to remove the names of ex-supporters from its website.)
Liberty Ark Lures NAIS Opponents into Slumber with the False Comfort of "Opt Outs"

On January 29, 2007, Liberty Ark's Karin Bergener and Judith McGeary issued a "press release" loudly trumpeting: "In a dramatic reversal of policy, the USDA has decided to provide an 'OPT OUT' procedure for people whose premises have been registered" in NAIS. (On precisely the same date, Henry Lamb posted an article on his website about this "dramatic" development, almost identical in wording to the Liberty Ark "press release.") The Liberty Ark "press release" went on to suggest that Liberty Ark had somehow discovered or even obtained this supposed boon through a telephone call to the USDA on January 26, 2007.

The truth is that NOFA/Mass, not Liberty Ark, was the first organization to secure a possibility of "opt outs." NOFA/Mass accomplished this in the summer of 2006, six months prior to Bergener and McGeary's announcement of a "dramatic reversal." Moreover, in New York State, apparently as a result of complaints from individual farmers, the state began to offer "opt outs" during the fall of 2006 for animal owners who had been placed in the premises ID program through data-mining, without their prior knowledge or consent. Perhaps most importantly, as NOFA/Mass itself has always indicated, an "opt out" procedure, far from any "dramatic reversal," is really a very poor remedy of too-little and too-late, since the animal owner's information should never have been submitted to USDA/APHIS in the first place, and since the states using data-mining to secure "false voluntary" premises IDs did not offer to discontinue the data-mining.

This "opt out" incident is characteristic of two traits common to Liberty Ark, Lamb, McGeary, and Bergener. First, they continually overstate the importance of their own accomplishments and fail to accord credit to the actual accomplishments of other groups and people. (Consistent with Lamb's sponsorship of the group, they seem especially eager to omit mention of the accomplishments of such pro-environmental groups as NOFA/Mass.) Second, they invariably endorse and support weak compromises and half-measures such as accepting "voluntary" government-run NAIS or supposed "opt outs" for people who should never have been forced into NAIS in the first place. This behavior is affirmatively harmful to the legitimate movement against NAIS. It lulls into submission those opponents of NAIS who incorrectly may believe that part of the problem has been "solved" by a misleadingly-named "voluntary" program or by "opt outs." Further, it has the potential to defeat the antiNAIS movement altogether. Consider what would happen if Liberty Ark/Lamb/McGeary/Bergener concentrated a large degree of power in their own hands by overstating their own "accomplishments" and never acknowledging the real accomplishments of others (particularly the real accomplishments of pro-environmental, sustainable farming groups). In that scenario, Liberty Ark/Lamb/McGeary/Bergener might well place themselves in the position of appearing to have the power to agree to some defeatist "compromise." In other words, what if Liberty Ark/Lamb/McGeary/Bergener act in ways that nullify the gains of those truly opposed to NAIS, by insinuating themselves into a position of influence with bureaucrats, legislators, and industrial farming interests such as Farm Bureau, and then obtaining less-than-desirable "concessions" or legislation to further their own agenda, despite the honest opposition of their "supporters?" Surely, we have not all labored tirelessly against NAIS just to have some unrepresentative, self-appointed group accept a result far short of what we really want – the complete eradication of any government NAIS program.

The Hopeful Ending: A Growing and Diverse NAIS Opposition Can Sustain the Movement's Truth

Many readers will be disheartened to learn of the tactics employed by Liberty Ark, FARFA, Lamb, McGeary, and Bergener. But the revelation of these tactics will allow true NAIS opponents to combat the negative effects of these groups and their "leaders." Fortunately, at just the time when more positive direction is needed by the antiNAIS movement, many more groups are embracing the true NAIS opposition message or are moving toward a more effective opposition. For example, R-CALF, previously only a mild and partial NAIS opponent, soon may be forced by a member referendum to take a stance of complete opposition. Many other livestock and farming groups on the local, state, or even national levels have taken up the antiNAIS cause in recent months. Sustainable and small-farming advocacy groups organized at the state and local levels are beginning to work actively against NAIS.

Those who have been most effective and successful in fighting any form of NAIS have done so by adhering to the true interests of their local supporters, and becoming very active in educating both the public and their government representatives about the dangers of any government-run animal identification system. This is truly a grassroots movement, and dedicated individuals and authentic local groups are responsible for the progress that has been made in the fight. There are many well-informed and passionate people diligently fighting against NAIS. The fight against NAIS offers the first legitimate opportunity in years, perhaps decades, to turn back the tide of corporate globalism and the earth-destroying excesses of industrial technology, and restore the ethical and moral values upon which local, human-scale, peaceful, generous communities can be built.

Don't squander the opportunity. Join with your friends, family, and neighbors, reject greed and blind self-interest, despise the technocrats' divorce from Nature, take back the Earth, restore the Creation as the cradle of life.

The 2006 Agricultural Identification Survey and the NASS/NAIS Identity

Copyright 2007 by Mary Zanoni. The following article may be distributed solely for personal and non-commercial use without prior permission from the author. Non-commercial distribution and posting to assist in disseminating information about NAIS is, in fact, encouraged, so long as proper credit is given and the article is reproduced without changes or deletions. Any other distribution or republication requires the author’s permission in writing and requests for such permission should be directed to the author at the address/phone/e-mail address below.

The 2006 Agricultural Identification Survey and the NASS/NAIS Identity

by

Mary Zanoni, Ph.D., J.D.

P.O. Box 501

Canton, NY 13617

315-386-3199

mlz@slic.com

January 17, 2007

Like many small-farm advocates, I have been fielding questions over the past few weeks about the above survey being sent out by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). Many people ask if there is any relationship between the survey and the data being collected (often without the knowledge or consent of farmers) for the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). As we shall see, although USDA personnel won’t admit it, NASS data is the foundation of the USDA’s aggressive pursuit of NAIS.

To my great surprise, in this morning's mail I myself received a 2006 Agricultural Identification Survey (2006 AIS). I say "to my great surprise," because I am not and never have been engaged in any type of commercial agriculture whatsoever. I have never before received any type of communication from NASS.

The envelope states in very large letters, "YOUR RESPONSE IS REQUIRED BY LAW." The envelope further states that the due date is January 29, 2007. As explained below, it is clear that many people receiving this form are not in fact "REQUIRED BY LAW" to answer it. Further, a recipient has only a couple of weeks between the receipt of the form and the purported deadline, and it would be impossible for the average non-lawyer to do enough research within that time to figure out whether he/she is or isn't actually required to respond.

The form itself begins with several general questions, such as “Do you own or rent any land?” “Do you grow vegetables, hay or nursery stock?” “Do you receive government payments?” The questions appear deliberately designed to imply that anyone who would answer “yes” is among those “REQUIRED BY LAW” to fill out this form. The USDA is thus casting a very wide net in this particular intrusion into the lives of American citizens, because, frankly, just about everyone who is not homeless “owns or rents” real estate; some 75 million people in the United States “grow vegetables;” and some 60 million people receive “government payments.” (See 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States, Table 1226 (vegetable gardening); Table 528 (government transfer payments).)

Now, perhaps it is possible that this “wide net” might not be as intrusive as it appears. After all, maybe NASS has only sent this form to people reasonably assumed to be farmers. But in fact it was distressingly easy to confirm that intrusiveness and deliberate over-inclusiveness are the hallmarks of the NASS approach. This morning, I called the information number listed on the form and spoke to a woman at the USDA’s Helena, Montana call center. According to her, the call center is being swamped with calls from people who live in cities and have nothing to do with agriculture. She stated that the call center employees really have no idea of why or how all these people have been sent the 2006 AIS. When asked for some conjecture as to how so many unnecessary people could have been included in the mailings, the woman explained that, for example, anyone who had ever subscribed to a “horse magazine” might have been included in the database.

Now, that raises interesting questions. How is the USDA/NASS getting the subscription lists of “horse magazines”? Why and how are “horse magazines,” or, for that matter, any rural-life publication, any breed association, feed store, or private or public livestock or horticultural enterprise whatsoever, giving their member/subscriber/customer lists to the government without telling their members, subscribers, or customers?

Or, worse yet, how is the government accessing such lists or databases without the awareness of the businesses or organizations in question? During times when the Executive Branch of the United States Government has secretly gathered the records of most people’s incoming and outgoing phone calls, and the President asserts a right to open your mail and my mail without a warrant, this is not a trivial question.

Returning to the first page of the form, we see the wide net growing ever wider. The form states: “Many people who don’t consider themselves farmers or ranchers actually meet the definition of a farm or ranch and are important to agriculture.” “We need your completed form even though you may not be actively farming, ranching, or conducting any other type of agricultural activity.” Finally, the first page of the form reinforces the threat of the “REQUIRED BY LAW” language of the envelope:

“ ‘Response to this survey is legally required by Title 7, U.S. Code.’ ” (Emphasis in original.) (Note the single-double quotation marks – the threat actually is in quotation marks, employing that common tenth-grade stylistic conceit of “quoting” something to make it appear extra-important.) One senses evasions aplenty here -- the form has referred to the “definition of a farm or ranch” but nowhere tells us that definition. It suggests that anyone receiving a form has a legal obligation to answer it, even though their enterprise may not meet the definition of a “farm.”

Given the foregoing ambiguities, I had further questions about the definition of a “farm” and the possible legal penalties for not responding to the 2006 AIS. Specifically, I asked if my understanding of the definition of “farm” as an operation with at least $1000 in sales from agriculture was correct. (See 2002 Census of Agriculture, FAQs, www.nass.usda.gov/census_of_agriculture/frequently_asked_questions/index.asp#1.) Further, having found the penalty listed in 7 USC § 2204g (d) (2), namely, that a “person . . . who refuses or willfully neglects to answer a question . . . . shall be fined not more than $100,” I noted that, insofar as the 2006 AIS actually contains 42 separate questions, it could be important to know whether there was a separate $100 fine for each unanswered question, or just a single $100 fine for not answering the entire 2006 AIS. These questions were beyond the purview of the call-center woman, so she made a note of the questions, referred them to a member of the NASS professional staff, and promised that the NASS staff member would call me with the answers.

The next day, January 12, 2007, I received a call from Jody Sprague, a NASS statistician. First we addressed the question of the “farm” definition. Ms. Sprague conceded that someone whose property or operation did not meet the “farm” definition would have no obligation to answer the 2006 AIS. She also conceded that the basic definition of a “farm” as an operation with at least $1000 in agricultural sales was correct, but explained that in addition to the gross sales figures, NASS also assigns certain “point values” for particular agricultural activities. If the points add up to 1000, your operation would meet the definition of a “farm.” When asked for an example of how the point values work, Ms. Sprague explained that 5 equines would equal a farm but 4 would not. (Subsequently, she explained that each equine equals 200 points.) When asked how many cattle equal a “farm,” Ms. Sprague said she did not know. At one point Ms. Sprague said that NASS wanted, through the 2006 AIS, to determine if they could delete people who should not be on their mailing list. But for the most part she contended the opposite, e.g., that she would “advise” anyone who had received the form to fill it out; and that even a person with one horse should complete the questionnaire, although she previously had conceded that someone with fewer than 5 horses would not meet the definition of a “farm” and therefore would not be required to fill out the survey.

We next turned to the issue of how NASS may have compiled its mailing list for the 2006 AIS. First Ms. Sprague maintained that the sources of the NASS mailing list are “confidential.” I noted the call-center woman’s reference to a subscription to a “horse magazine” as a source of names, and asked for some other possible sources. Ms. Sprague said that growers’ associations, such as the Wheat Growers’ Association and Barley Growers’ Association, were examples of sources. I asked for more examples but she was reluctant to give any, claiming that some are “confidential” and some are “not confidential.” She explained the overall process of list building thus: as NASS comes across lists where there are “possibilities of agricultural activity,” NASS incorporates those names into its mailing list.

We returned to the subject of “point values” for different livestock. Explaining that many people were likely to have questions about this, I asked if Ms. Sprague could find out for me the point values of cattle or other non-equine livestock. She put me on hold for a long while. Subsequently, she gave me the following point values: beef cattle, 310 points per head; dairy cattle, 2000 points per head; goats and sheep, 50 points per head. (I wanted to ask about chickens, but I was getting the distinct sense that I might be pushing my luck.)

Ms. Sprague stressed that she did not want people to be concentrating on the point values. For example, she noted that people should not say they have 4 horses if they really have 5 horses, “because it wouldn’t be ethical.” (But apparently under the NASS moral code, rummaging through some of those Choicepoint-type consumer profiles to track your reading habits is perfectly “ethical.” And, as we shall see, the NASS moral code also permits forking over your data to states that are in hot pursuit of the NAIS premises-registration quotas imposed as a condition for the states’ continued receipt of federal NAIS grant money.)

We went on to the question of the $100 non-compliance fine. Ms. Sprague assured me that a farmer’s failure to answer any or all of the 42 total questions on the 2006 AIS would only result in a single $100 fine. She also said that the fine is “rarely enforced” and that if any “producer” “chooses” not to report, no one from NASS would seek them out.

Finally, I asked Ms. Sprague if there were any relationships between NASS and the APHIS NAIS program, and she said, “Absolutely none.” I asked her if any other agency, state or federal, would ever be allowed to use NASS’s database to solicit premises IDs for NAIS, and she said, “Absolutely not.” And indeed, pursuant to 7 U.S.C. § 2204g (f) (3), “Information obtained [for NASS surveys] may not be used for any purpose other than the statistical purposes for which the information is supplied.”

Several weeks ago, Missouri antiNAIS activist Doreen Hannes sent a series of questions about Missouri’s solicitation of NAIS premises IDs to Steve Goff, DVM, the Animal ID Administrator of the Missouri Department of Agriculture (MDA). Dr. Goff provided written answers on December 20, 2006. When asked where the MDA had obtained addresses for its solicitation of NAIS premises IDs, Dr. Goff stated: “the mailing was done through a contract with the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service.”

I won’t answer my 2006 Agricultural Information Survey. Instead, I will send a copy of this article to my Congressman and my two United States Senators. I will ask them to have the House and Senate Agriculture Committees investigate the rampant and shameful abuses of federal law and common morality inherent in NASS’s compilation of its mailing lists and use of those lists to promote the APHIS National Animal Identification System. Why will I do this? Because I don’t live by the USDA’s false code of ethics; I answer to a higher authority.

Animal ID Big Issue For Small Producers In Northeast States

Animal ID Big Issue For Small Producers In Northeast States

By David Bowser

CANTON, New York — Mary Zanoni is not a big rancher. She has 11 animals on 25 acres in upstate New York. She has five head of cattle, seven chickens, two cats, a dog and a cockatiel.

She is not happy with the idea of a National Animal Identification System.

"In April 2005, when USDA released the draft strategic plan," Zanoni says, "I saw a small article in Lancaster Farming that mentioned it, so I downloaded it and read it."

Lancaster Farming is a farm publication out of Lancaster, Penn. While she says it primarily focuses on the dairy industry, it is the dominant agricultural publication in the northeastern U.S.

In one issue of Lancaster Farming, Zanoni says, there were a couple of paragraphs buried inside the paper saying the draft had been released.

"It piqued my curiosity," Zanoni says. "I had heard things previously about the USAIP (U.S. Animal Identification Plan) and so forth, but had never read any of them or had any intention to, but I figured, ‘Oh, it's getting serious.’"

"When I read it," she says, "I was amazed. It was overblown and absurd. Insane. Bureaucratic. It was just astounding to me that a relatively small number of people could decide upon doing something like that that would affect such a large number of people without any input from the large number of people."

Zanoni, who has a Ph.D. from Cornell and her law degree from Yale, is executive director of Farm Life, a sustainable agriculture organization in upstate New York. She taught at the University of Texas and clerked for a New Jersey Supreme Court justice.

"I worked with the federal court system," Zanoni says. "I was the head of the staff attorney's office for the federal district courts in New Jersey."

She's also interned at grass-based dairies.

After reading the 2005 draft strategic plan, she began speaking out on the National Animal Identification System.

She's been writing opinion pieces for various publications and speaking to small breed associations and farm groups.

"I spoke at the Northeast Organic Farming Association meeting this summer," Zanoni says. "That was in August. I was on a panel there with a woman from Food and Water Watch from Washington, D.C., and man from the Center for Science in the Public Interest in D.C. and the Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture, Doug Gillespie."

Animal owners in Massachusetts were angry with Gillespie because the state department of agriculture took state data they had collected for decades and gave it to the USDA.

"They've historically had an animal census in Massachusetts," Zanoni explains.

Last year, the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture took all those records and sent them to the USDA premises registration database, but neither the farmers nor the legislators knew about it.

Soon Massachusetts farmers were getting notification of their premise ID numbers. A lot of farmers were confused and many of them were angry. They had not signed up for the program.

At the Northeast Organic Farming Association meeting, Zanoni says Gillespie told farmers that technically, because the USDA registration is voluntary, once they've received their registration number, they could go online and get back out of the federal database.

With a laugh, Zanoni says she's now getting reports from farmers who have tried to remove their farms from the database and the government wants them to sign a waiver of their legal rights to be removed from the premise database.

"People don't want to sign that because they say, ‘What if they don't take it out of the database?’" Zanoni says. "They don't know what to do."

Zanoni says the Northeast Organic Farming Association is actively opposing the National Animal Identification System.

She was on a program in Pennsylvania with several National Animal Identification System officials.

That vociferousness apparently resulted in an invitation to speak at the ID Expo in Kansas City, Mo., in late August.

"I was invited by Jim Clement, who organized that session," Zanoni says. "He's the assistant state veterinarian in North Dakota, and he organized that session, so he called me and invited me."

Dr. Clement is also the animal ID coordinator for North Dakota, and Zanoni says she assumes that he wanted different viewpoints at the conference.

"I don't think the NIAA (National Institute for Animal Agriculture) has the least interest in a point of view from outside," Zanoni says.

She thinks they hope to implement the National Animal Identification System eventually, and that the people who don't like it will just go away.

But she says there is growing opposition to NAIS among small livestock producers in the Northeast.

"What's even more surprising to me is that the state regulators who are doing this at the behest of the USDA, they find it surprising that people would consider it objectionable to get this number in the mail of a program that they don't want anything to do with, and it's supposed to be voluntary," Zanoni says.

She says the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets has also taken data from existing state programs and shared it with USDA.

"The coordinators who work for this state are people whose positions were created with grant money from USDA," Zanoni says.

Their jobs wouldn't exist without the USDA, Zanoni contends.

"These are new positions created because they got grant money from the USDA, so they hired somebody to do NAIS work," she says.

Zanoni says she had one report from a farmer that a woman he contacted with the New York agriculture department told him the state was just taking data from whatever state programs they had and sending it to the USDA and the USDA was assigning premise ID numbers based on that state information.

"Right now, if you look at the NAIS website, they've got 322,000-plus premise registrations," Zanoni says. "There is merit to our contention that there's a difference between volunteering for a program and being forced or being placed in it without even consultation and assenting to it."

She questions how many of those 322,000 are bogus.

"How many of those people can actually show you where Joe Hog Farmer came and filled out a form and said, 'I want to be in the program. I want a premise registration?'" Zanoni asks. "You would think they would be able to show that for every single one of them."

She thinks all the premise IDs USDA has assigned in Massachusetts, New York and now Pennsylvania might be invalid.

"Whatever has been sent in from those three states is apparently completely bogus, and none of those people actually volunteered," Zanoni says. "They just took it from some existing database."

She says some of the property owners might have volunteered, and some of them may still volunteer to join the program, but some of them won't.

"In Vermont, this whole thing has gone through three phases," Zanoni says. "First, the USDA put out the draft strategic plan and said, ‘Here's our intention. We're going to do rulemaking in the summer of 2006 to make this a mandatory program, and here is how we expect it to go.’"

But that rulemaking never happened.

"I guess because they had complaints about it," Zanoni says, "for some reason they didn't want to do that rulemaking last summer."

At least, they didn't do any rulemaking.

"Instead, they put out an implementation plan in April that said they're just going to leave it voluntary for now," Zanoni says, "but if we don't get 100 percent participation, we'll make it mandatory anytime we feel like it. They didn't, couldn't or chose not to make it mandatory that way."

Last year, Zanoni says in some states, the agriculture departments went to their state legislators and said they wanted legislation for mandatory premise identification.

"They did that in Vermont," Zanoni says. "They did that in Maine."

But a lot of animal owners and farmers showed up at hearings and didn't want it.

The legislators didn't want to impose an unpopular program.

In both Maine and Vermont, Zanoni says, legislators told the state agriculture departments they wouldn't pass it that year and to come back and try the next year.

"As I understand it, in Vermont," Zanoni says, "where they don't have any mandatory premises ID, the number of people who volunteered was a few hundred."

In New York State, some 13,000 have been registered.

"In Pennsylvania, they say they've submitted over 25,000," Zanoni says, "but as far as I know, none of those are legitimate volunteers."

Zanoni indicates that she thinks it's more than just an animal health issue.

"You look at this and you see complete top-down imposition of a way of doing something," Zanoni says. "It's all interrelated with the dictates of international trade and the dictates of international animal health. It's a handmaiden for trade."

Right now, she says, the U.S. loves the concept of foot and mouth disease-free versus non-FMD-free areas because the U.S. has no FMD. It's an advantage for the U.S.

"We can use it to bludgeon other countries that aren't FMD-free," Zanoni says. "If we had some FMD in this country, I betcha in a New York minute our agriculture department would be going to the OIE, saying ‘That's a false distinction. Let's do away with it.’"

In fact, she questions whether the National Animal Identification System has anything to do with animal health.

"All of these things, when you start taking them apart and looking at them, they seem to have nothing to do with any really legitimate concerns about health," Zanoni says.

She says animal ID became a priority when bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE or mad cow disease, first hit the headlines. She says the reaction to BSE was out of control.

There have been fewer than 200 cases of variant CJD in human beings worldwide.

"It's a really tragic disease," Zanoni ackowledges, "but it's a minute number of people."

There have fewer than 200 deaths of H5N1 avian influenza in the world since they first recognized the strain a decade ago, she says.

"How's this stuff becoming this giant pseudo problem that's somehow dominating our thinking," she asks, "and allowing the imposition of these huge bureaucratic control programs? I simply don't think any government should have such complete knowledge or control over who owns livestock, what are they doing with the livestock, where are they selling the livestock, or where are they putting the livestock."

The USDA keeps assuring everyone that the information will be kept confidential, she says. They say they won't even go into any of the databases unless a disease of concern pops up somewhere.

"The temptation to use these databases for all kinds of other things is going to irresistible," Zanoni counters. "The only way to keep a database from being abused is to not have it."

Zanoni says she doesn't find it comforting that the USDA wants to put the animal-tracking database into private hands.

She also questions the economics of it.

"There's absolutely no cost control," Zanoni says.

She says other federal programs like crop insurance are out of control.

"That's one of those public-private partnerships," Zanoni says of the crop insurance program. "Farmers don't complain about it because their premiums are kept artificially low because they're subsidized, but in the NAIS program, there's not going to be any government subsidy. They keep saying that. They keep saying there will be costs to producers. They won't really define or tell us how much it's going to cost, but there will be costs to producers."

There has been some indication, she says, that the animal ID program won't be cheap.

"We know from the rules that were introduced, although not implemented yet in Texas, that it was going to be at least $10 a year for premise ID, which is probably a realistically low cost," Zanoni says. "We know that the RFID tags that you can get for $3.25 apiece only have a 70 percent read rate, so they're no good. You really have to buy ultra high-frequency tags, which cost $20 a pop. There are an awful lot of things walking around on four legs that don't yield you $20 after you've sold them."

She says she's seen one estimate that the reports filed each time an animal is moved will cost 30 cents.

Zanoni says she expects that to go up. Such cost coupled with the beef checkoff, whether it's a dollar a head or goes up to two dollars a head, will just add to the overhead for small producers.

"It's the exact same thing as the crop insurance scam," Zanoni says. "It's just a way for a few players to make a lot of money off government-sponsored programs. It's even more offensive because the crop insurance isn't mandatory and the farmers at least get the subsidized premiums. In animal ID, you're going to get no subsidy from the government and it's going to be mandatory eventually. Even if you didn't want it, you wouldn't be able to send animals to the auction without it."

The luckiest thing that ever happened to the opponents of animal ID, Zanoni says, is that USDA released the draft strategic plan.

"What a giant mistake that was," Zanoni says. "If they had just gone ahead with all this underhanded subterfuge like assigning the numbers in Pennsylvania and New York, then we wouldn't have known what the heck they were. That incompetence might seem funny, but if they impose the plan and it's mandatory, we're going to put up not only with that degree of incompetence but worse in the running of the plan."