Do you know where your state stands on the NAIS program?

Any benefit of this specious proposal goes to big agri-business by making factory farming practices, where contagious livestock diseases are most likely to occur, seem safe; moreover, it establishes costly barriers for the ever-growing local food movement. It may help the feedlot beef industry improve its image for the export market.

Other beneficiaries include manufacturers of animal identification and tracking systems who stand to garner hefty profits. The program seeks to protect an industrial agricultural system that, through the use of sub-therapeutic antibiotics, confinement farming and unnatural feeding practices, exacerbates the threat of diseases within it, and has spurred the local food movement that rejects its products.

At the same time, NAIS will devastate the alternative local farming system many of us, both as farmers and consumers, have given our life energy to create. By virtue of our farming practices, small pasture-based livestock farms like ours do not suffer the same disease risks as factory farms; in fact, our grazing practices and natural farming methods actually help to thwart them. Pathogenic microbes are less likely to thrive, replicate or develop antibiotic resistant strains when animals are kept in a natural environment, outdoors, on grass. Further, when small farms are full participants in a local food system, tracking a diseased animal doesn’t require an exorbitantly expensive national database.

The burden for a program that will safeguard agribusiness interests will be disproportionately shouldered by America’s small farmers, rural families, and local food consumers. Worse yet, the burden for administering it will force many rural Americans to lose our way of life.......

Many of us farmers live on the dark side of the digital divide. At Sap Bush Hollow Farm, dial-up is our only internet option, and it is difficult to maintain a connection. The frustration is compounded when the NAIS requires that we report the movement of every animal on the premises within 48 hours. Imagine the reporting nightmare we will face each May, when 100 ewes give birth to 200 lambs out on pasture, and then, six weeks later when those pastures are grazed off, the entire flock must be herded one mile up the road to a second farm that we rent. Add to that the arrival every three weeks of three hundred chicks, the three 500 pound sows who will each give birth to about 10 piglets out in the pastures twice per year (and who will attack anyone who comes near their babies more fiercely than a junkyard pit bull), then a batch of 100 baby turkeys, and the free-roaming laying hens. Additional tagging and record keeping would be required for the geese and guin ea fowl who nest somewhere behind the barn and in the hedgerows, occasionally visiting the neighbors’ farms, hatching broods of goslings and keets that run wild all summer long. Double that accounting figure each time one of those animals is sold, dies, or is trucked to a slaughterhouse. Then, factor in the penalties for non-compliance if we fail to account for a lamb quietly stolen by a coyote, or the added costs if we suffer injury when trying to come between a protective sow and her piglets...........

......Yet another scar to be left by this program will be on rural America’s cultural and economic landscape. Rural families have long been able to thrive on wholesome local food while subsisting on incomes well below the national average. They do this by keeping a flock of chickens in the backyard, feeding out a pig, milking a family cow or goat, or teaming up with a neighbor to raise a beef animal. Rural youth take on backyard livestock for 4-H projects, learn more about a future in farming, earn cash for college, and make a contribution to the family’s food security. The annual fixed costs of participating in NAIS will exceed the value of the livestock for these families.

With any governmental agency, the words used in any law, regulation, rule or other declaration by the government or its agencies must be carefully scrutinized. What may seem to be nothing more than a simple word-swap may actually be a new legal definition and one that may come back to haunt you. Under NAIS the term ‘property’ is swapped for ‘premises.’

Property is the term used to indicate private ownership of a thing such as land or animals and is protected by rights in the Constitution. It does signify legal ownership, and who is the legal owner and allows you access to a Civil Court and protection under the Constitution.
‘Premises’ is a term derived from the International Law of Contracts which are the international rules for conducting business, usually corporate, whereby ‘non-human entities’ are declared to be ‘persons.’ Agreeing to the redefining of ‘property’ and to the conversion to premises eliminates civil protections and redefines you as a ‘legal entity’ who may or may not own the thing in question. This also subjects you to Administrative Courts using statute and codes which are derived from the International Law of Contracts (ILC) and prohibits any use of rights enumerated or otherwise within the constitution.
NAIS is a contract!
Any time you sign your name to any government program you have effectively entered into a contract. NAIS is a contractual agreement between you, the individual land owner/livestock owner, and the USDA acting as agent for the federal government, or your state agriculture department acting as agent. Using the ILC’s own rules, no contract is valid unless all parties are fully apprised of ALL provisions and terms of the contract.
NAIS has intentionally not revealed ALL aspects of the contract, or the real intent of the program. This renders any attempts to mandate compliance as null and void.
Neither the government nor its agencies or agents have listed any limits with regard to any authority any or all of them may now assume or implement as a result of rule making or changes to policies, mandates and regulations. This means you do NOT know all the terms of the contract.
Neither is NAIS an ‘adhesion contract’ wherein the terms and conditions of the contract never, ever change because USDA or even Congress can change the rules and regulations at any time.
Since the USDA is a self regulating and rule making agency, in effect making its own laws and enforcing them at will, rules could be changed at a later date drastically affecting everyone who has entered into this contract.
When those of you who ‘voluntarily’ signed up for Premises ID and animal registration signed your name to what is a contract between you and the Federal government, did you not notice the contract provided no limitations or restrictions regarding the authority you just conveyed to the Federal government?
Did you notice not one word was said about limiting the actions of agencies such as the USDA and no protections against unwarranted search and seizure or other legal actions were afforded to you?
So, what did you actually sign up for?
Voluntarily or even by forced mandate, you have given up your rights to your own property and, in exchange, you got what? Were you compensated? Is there any intent to compensate you? The answers are no. In fact the cost of NAIS is being passed on to the people being victimized by yet another Federal program, the intent of which is to seize all farm and ranch lands and all livestock, putting all of it under Federal control.
In the end, we need to understand that ‘property’ has a far different meaning under the laws than the word ‘premises.’ Had there not been an intention to render a change in the status of property ownership and control, there would have been no need to use the word Premises. Rep Colin Peterson (D-MN) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) didn’t slip this word in there accidentally.
In fact, there are a few things neither of them ever mentioned. Most specifically, neither mentions the fact that all the lands being consigned to the control of the USDA will be added to the US Lands Preservation Act, now before Congress. Supposedly, more than 150 various bills from nearly every state just showed up at once and were rolled into one omnibus land package. Go figure. What a coincidence.
Why is this important?
All heritage lands including national parks and reserves, wetlands preserves, forests, waterways and wildlife preserves and other non-specific land holdings are owned by the federal government, although the government is prohibited from owning any land other than what is needed to operate, within the Constitution. Now they intend to seize control of your farm or ranch land.
All of the land being claimed by the federal government including the lands being seized under the National Animal Identification System are being used to collateralize the funds borrowed to bail out Wall Street. As we have done to many poor and disadvantaged nations, we first forced them into unmanageable debt through loans and other instruments. Each and every one of these loans was predicated on a debt/asset swap. They put up the only thing they had of value … land, and whatever resources might be included with that. Then we made sure they could never meet the terms of the loans and when they defaulted, we swapped their debt for the assets they had collateralized. The same thing has been done to us.
We have been forced into unmanageable and un-repayable debt through bailouts and stimulus plans. All of these borrowed funds are transferred and managed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. All of these borrowed funds must have a source of collateral … no one will loan to us just on our good name. The only source of collateral accepted by the World Bank for these massive loans is land or gold and silver. We have no gold and silver.
The US Lands Preservation Act is nothing more than the official collecting and cataloguing of all federally held lands which will now be used to swap debt for assets. Your land, once registered for NAIS will also be listed as an asset in this debt.
And you thought this was about national security, export development, disease and food safety.
© 2009 Marti Oakley