Traceability NEW

How NAIS will be forced upon the public...

The National Animal Identification System-NAIS is a dictate of international trade agreements and the agreement on the application of the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS agreements). The SPS agreements provides member countries with a RIGHT to implement traceability as an SPS measure. That is now termed Country of Origin Labeling - Cool for short.

SPS measures deal with food safety and animal and plant health standards. The World Trade Organization does not set standards. The WTO SPPS agreement encourages member countries to use standards set by international organizations. (e.g. Codex Alimentarius, International Offices of Epizooties-OIE and International Plant
Protection Convention-IPPC)

These agreements were not voted by the AMERICAN PEOPLE of the UNITED STATES of AMERICA. If these agreements worked the American People would not be seeing increased poisoned food and products arriving on the shores of America. Pet food, toothpaste, lead in baby products etc.

In the 2002 Farm Bill Country of Origin-COOL was passed and sign by President Bush, However because mandatory COOL program statute states that the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture cannot require an individual animal identification program for implementation of mandatory Cool what better way then to design a program on the pretense for disease.

The NAIS is a three part phased in program which includes COOL components and that is why the UDSA is calling the NAIS Voluntary at the Federal level because they can not implement COOL with NAIS.

I do hope you bear with me as I explain how they intend to get their critical mass of 70 percent to have small producers of various sizes and hobbyists Voluntarily sign up to the NAIS thus the USDA will then get Traceability via the SPS agreements voluntarily while the farmers and hobbyist will pay for this program and industry gets off scott free on this huge financial burden.

The USDA cannot enforce the NAIS as mandatory so the states have agreed to implement via cooperative agreements. Each state received an allotted amount of money, In order for the USDA to abide by such agreements for traceability. The 2007 Cooperative agreement is based on the amount of premises signed up, an incentive so to speak.

Now in order to comply the USDA will be initiating the NAIS on the Interstate Certificates of Veterinary Inspection (ICVI) for going across borders, Interstate travel, They will be incorporating the requirements of Premises Identification at the Seller end and the Buyer end thus increasing the critical mass. Another name for this would be the bookend approach. Regardless the Premises identification number will be a part of the travel documents on all animals thus achieving a higher critical mass number of registered premises.

In the A Business Plan to Advance Animal Disease Traceability on page 10 In order to achieve critical mass,
USDA estimates that 70 percent of the animals in a specific species/sector need to be identified and traceable to their premises of origin.

How to achieve critical mass: In the Traceability business plan on page 18: Opportunities to Advance Traceability coggins testing is a prerequisite for all interstate movement (state requirement), and in some states, for intrastate movement as well. Efforts are underway to develop a USDA national state-federal cooperative program for the control of EIA that would establish national EIA (Coggins) testing requirements for (a) interstate movement and (b) change of ownership. Horses must be identified (description/drawing, digital photograph, electronic implant) on the requisite Coggins test-related paperwork. Overall, establishing regulations to require premises registration in association with Coggins testing would substantively increase the number of both premises registered and horses identified. When horses move interstate to attend shows or exhibitions, registration is required upon entry. Accordingly, event officials are able to track horses moving intra- or interstate (via interstate passport) to the farm of origin. Concurrently, animal health officials are able to track to the premises of origin and destination via Interstate Certificates of Veterinary Inspection (ICVI) for horses moving interstate. Though impossible to quantify nationally, experience has shown that the number of Coggins tests performed annually increased three-fold following implementation of a change-of-ownership testing requirement in Texas.

EIA testing (equines) http://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/animal_diseases/eia/web-mapping.shtml States "test horses under certain circumstances, for example, moving a horse across a state boundary. State,
university and private labs, all NVSL-approved, are required to report the reactors (positive test results)within 24 hours to the State Veterinarian. Negative test results are also reported". As you can see testing for equines are reported within 24 hours to the appropriate authorities.

Once they get this critical mass of 70 percent the USDA can then phase in part two of the program which is Animal Identification via the Interstate Certificate of Veterinary Inspection (ICVI). All farmers and all hobbyist who own livestock, which includes 28 species, will have to identify each and every animal they own should they travel across borders or have a change of ownership due to the requirement of having a health certificate for a sale of an animal. The megacoporation farms also know as CAFO's who mass produce
only have to mark the animals by Group/Lot identification. This clearly shows that we the farmers and the hobbyist will be paying for this traceability program to abide by the SPS agreements.

Once this step is completed the USDA will then phase in part three of the program by requiring that Reporting of Animal
movement be recorded for Traceability. The process of Farm to fork is now complete. All the while the small farmer and the hobbyist will be paying to implement Country of Origin labeling through the NAIS to adhere to the SPS agreements for Traceability.

This program, the NAIS, is not about animal disease it is about traceability and only traceability for the megacorporations as all 50 state have laws for required testing in order to transport across state lines. Any reactor is already reported to the State vet within 24 hours. Remember now that Animal Id was not to be used with COOL.

In the food chain traceability/product tracing is defined by the Codex Alimentarius Commission as the ability to follow the movement of a food through specified stage(s)of production, processing and distribution. http://www.fao.org/ag/agn/agns/foodcontrol_traceability_en.asp
Production is the farmer, Processing is the slaughter house and distribution is retail.

Two new agreements on technical barriers to trade came into force when the WTO was created, namely: the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) and the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement). The SPS Agreement is concerned, inter alia, with the application of food safety and animal and plant health measures to international trade in animals, plants
and their products. The underlying objective is to ensure that governments do not use quarantine and food safety requirements as unjustified trade barriers to protect domestic agriculture industries from import competition. Makes one wonder now why cattle are not tested for BSE.

http://www.oie.int/eng/publicat/rt/2002/WILSON.PDFon Interstate Certificates of Veterinary Inspection (ICVI)

In this report, The EC Traceability and Equivalence Rules in Light of the SPS Agreement:

A Review of the Main Legal Issues; Commissioned by CTA, December 2003.The report was prepared by Connor and Company

The purpose of traceability rules is to enable targeted and accurate withdrawals of products in the food chain in the event of a sanitary crisis . Thus traceability requirements apply at all stages of production, processing and distribution. Operators must be able to identify the persons and undertakings from whom they purchase their products, but also those to which they supply. This information must be made available to the relevant authorities on demand.

Furthermore, food or feed that is placed on the market must be adequately labeled or identified through relevant documentation.

Prior to this Regulation, the EC implemented specific traceability regimes in the sectors of beef and genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Beef is the object of Commission Regulation 1825/2000 of 25 August 2000. Its purpose is to avoid the spread of diseases such as BSE and to protect the health and safety of consumers. Thus, operators must keep a complex identification and registration system for beef at each of the various stages of production and sales. Such system must be able to record the quantity of the cattle and provide a link between the cattle and the meat consumed. Passports, ear tags, computerized databases etc. must also be provided. With the exception of transporters, all movements, births and deaths of cattle must be recorded. The cattle and the meat must also be appropriately labeled. A voluntary labeling scheme is proposed, as well as the recognition that the procedures and/or criteria applied in third countries are equivalent to the standards set out in Regulation 1825/2000.

Because the governments do not use quarantine and food safety requirements due to unjustified trade barriers to protect domestic agriculture industries from import competition. Now you know why cattle are not tested for BSE and only testing confirms BSE. They have no intentions of protecting your health, they are interested only in profits and keeping the borders open to TRADE.

The NAIS will provide the Necessary information that COOL needs without it being MANDATORY at the Federal Level via the various stages of production and sales, as all movements, births and deaths of livestock must be recorded while the small producers and hobbyists will pay for this scheme.

In a recent press release, Mr Knight Stated: In addition, USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS)released a new business plan for the animal ID program that would integrate parts of animal ID into USDA various source, quality assessment and export verification programs. Using USDA animal ID tagging system in such programs would also allow for verification in COOL as well.
http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5068314

Until the AMS announcement, USDA had maintained that the NAIS was exclusively an animal health program. Knight said blending aspects of the National Animal Identification System into marketing programs would not take away from the focus at USDA of using NAIS for an animal health program, particularly at the Animal and Plant Health Inspection System.

Furthermore dedicated "STAKEHOLDER GROUP" that organizes and oversees local transformation IS NOT ELECTED BY THE PUBLIC. And the people selected To represent the "citizens" in our states are not representing our best interest. The chosen "partners", professional staff, and working groups are implementing a new system of governance without asking our opinion then this further clarifies my position to NO NAIS. We the people know who the professionals are, the chosen partners are, the professional staff are and who the working groups are, Those very groups were not voted by me nor "We the People" nor is it under the constitution that gives them the rights to form a consensus to give away our rights. The constitution is the supreme law of the Land.