USDA: Can You Hear Me Now?
By Henry Lamb
June 22, 2009
Page 2 of 2
The NAIS allows industrial chicken producers, for example, to tag a "batch" of chickens with a single number, regardless of the number of chickens in the batch. The family farmer, on the other hand, must catch and tag each chicken, and report to the government --within 24 hours - should the chicken escape from the yard or get eaten by a fox -- or by the family.
In Texas, Judith McGeary, Director of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, told the USDA that their recently released cost-benefit study had "more holes than a block of Swiss cheese." She also delivered a box containing more than 2000 pages of signatures from livestock producers who say "NO!" to NAIS.
From one end of the country to the other, the message was clear and unmistakable: NO NAIS! The afternoon break-out sessions designed to build consensus around seven questions, turned into a non-stop barrage of reasons why NAIS will never be accepted. Doreen Hannes, a small farmer in Missouri, drew wild applause when she vowed that she would never comply. "I'll die before I comply," she declared before the cheering Missouri crowd.
By every count, more than 90% of the people who were allowed to speak at the listening sessions, spoke against the NAIS.
It is abundantly clear that the people who will be governed by the NAIS, do not consent to the proposed law. Legitimate government is empowered by the consent of the governed; power imposed by the government without the consent of the governed is tyranny.
The only question that remains is what the USDA will do next. Funding for NAIS has been removed from the agriculture appropriation bill because NAIS has not been implemented. The USDA can either abandon its NAIS aspirations, or, in order to get funding, it can disregard the loudly expressed will of the people and mandate participation in the NAIS.
Galen Borntrager, a young Iowa farmer put it quite well when he told the USDA in Missouri, "Let this message go out from this meeting: no NAIS, no way, no how, not in this country, not under any circumstance, not today, not tomorrow, not ever!"
USDA: Can you hear me now?
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Henry Lamb is the author of "The Rise of Global Governance," Chairman of Sovereignty International , and founder of the Environmental Conservation Organization (ECO) and Freedom21, Inc..
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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA. >> Back -- Page 1 2
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