Shannon Hayes writes in an op-ed in the New York Times:

AT first glance, the plan by the federal Department of Agriculture to battle disease among farm animals is a technological marvel: we farmers tag every head of livestock in the country with ID chips and the department electronically tracks the animals’ whereabouts. If disease breaks out, the department can identify within 48 hours which animals are ill, where they are, and what other animals have been exposed.

At a time when diseases like mad cow and bird flu have made consumers worried about food safety, being able to quickly track down the cause of an outbreak seems like a good idea. Unfortunately, the plan, which is called the National Animal Identification System and is the subject of a House subcommittee hearing today, would end up rewarding the factory farms whose practices encourage disease while crippling small farms and the local food movement.

NAIS has been around awhile, but now Congress is proposing to make it mandatory. Hayes goes on to detail how much it would cost small farmers to chip every cow and chicken, calf and pullet.

Besides, NAIS is about controling disease by quarantine, which is locking the barn after the horses are out. Hayes gets to the root of the matter:

Cheaper and more effective than an identification system would be a nationwide effort to train farmers and veterinarians about proper management, bio-security practices and disease recognition. But best of all would be prevention. To heighten our food security, we should limit industrial agriculture and stimulate the growth of small farms and backyard food production around the country.

It’s especially intersting that this push to chip animals comes just as the company that’s pushed hardest to chip humans, Verichip, is about to have its symbol, CHIP, delisted from NASDAQ.

And if you look on USDA’s own NAIS web pages, the root of NAIS is a business plan which says not one word I can find about prevention. What USDA itself identifies as “a key strategy” from that business plan is:

WASHINGTON, April 15, 2008–The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today announced that it has implemented a key strategy from its Business Plan to Advance Animal Disease Traceability by providing National Animal Identification System (NAIS) compliant “840” radio frequency (RF) eartags to animal health officials for use in the bovine tuberculosis (TB) control program.

NAIS-compliant “840” tags provide for individual identification of livestock through a 15-digit number beginning with the U.S. country code. Through the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, the “840” tags allow animal health officials to electronically identify an animal. This increases the efficiency of animal disease investigations that involve the tracing of exposed and potentially infected animals. RFID technology also increases the accuracy of recording the animal’s 15-digit animal identification number (AIN). USDA has purchased a total of 1.5 million “840” RF animal identification tags to support animal disease control programs, including the bovine TB and brucellosis programs.

That answers the question of who is it a business plan for? For the RFID chip manufacturers!

This House push for mandatory cow chipping comes one month after RFID Monthly asked Does RFID Have Longevity?

February 22, 2009, 8:33 am

Given Sam’s pushback, P&G’s retreat from Wal-Mart and the weakened economy resulting in less capital for RFID, we suggested tag volumes would likely be down in the first part of 2009. This past week, Zebra announced it took a $143M charge to impair goodwill associated with its Enterprise Solutions Group acquisitions, mostly related to WhereNet, and a $15M charge to impair the value of its license with Intermec to produce Gen 2 product. The impairment with WhereNet is related to a severe fall off in the automotive markets, and considerable slowing in the commercial and intermodal markets. The licensing write-down simply reflects how slowly the Gen 2 market has progressed relative to expectations. Recall, Zebra joined Intermec’s rapid start program in 2005 paying an upfront licensing fee.

The failing RFID industry is making a last-ditch stand on the bodies of small-farm animals.

USDA could better spend this $200 million or so on prevention. For example in regulating big factory farms like the factories they are. Their high-density monoculture animal production is the most likely source of any disease outbreak, not widely separated small farms.

Yet only factory farmers testified at the House hearing Wednesday; very few small or organic farmers were heard, even though they are the ones most affected by mandatory chipping.

Nonetheless, there are any number of ways to make your voice heard, for example leave a comment in the Federal Register.

Or contact your representative. The chair of the Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry is David Scott, GA-13, 202-225-2939 (voice), 202-225-4628 (fax).

Or oppose mandatory chicken chipping at the state level.

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