Colorado State Fair Punished 4-H Kids

Ordway, Colorado  On the eve of the livestock sale at the Colorado State Fair being held in Pueblo this week, several youngsters who had qualified for the sale were told they would not be able to sell their animals because they had not complied with the state fair rule requiring enrollment in the premises registration component of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). Two of the families involved had submitted the premises identification number for their county fairgrounds. Both families say they received permission from state fair officials to do so for the 2007 fair. Both families object to 4-H making property enrollment mandatory in order to participate in 4-H. Both families have been vocal in their opposition, which is their right.  On the eve of the sale, families were given the last-minute choice of either enrolling their property in the premises registration system on site or being ejected from the sale and the fairgrounds. In fact, these families were told that security would escort them from the grounds immediately.  Premises registration was not required at the 2007 fair for breeding animals; only terminal animals were affected. If this is an animal disease trace back issue, why were breeding animals excluded? Could it be that the livestock sale was used as leverage to coerce enrollment?  Beyond the emotional stress and pain inflicted on these youngsters, a central question to this debacle is how fair officials, or anyone else for that matter, accessed the NAIS database to verify identification numbers when it is only supposed to be accessed by the state veterinarian and only in the event of an animal health crisis.  Something is terribly wrong when youngsters are penalized and punished so heartlessly. This is not a proud moment for Colorado State Fair, 4-H and the Colorado Department of Agriculture.

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The total picture would have to be viewed for determination I believe . If the animals sold might go to market for food , all controls available should be in force and enforced . As for the breeding , I have always thought that there were not enough controls anyway when you figure people only breed livestock for the purpose of sale to feed stock interests and ultimately all are food issues . China is a prime examole of going backwards on all food / health / safety issues , even to reinventing the wheel , okay , tire , but it has had horrible results . Starting with the 4H kids is a real good idea , they are still innocent in most cases and unfettered and most likely will be the ones to further our interests where all agriculture is concerned . Breeding has really done some harm in many areas , especially in dogs for show , creating many nitwit animals which go out of control real easy and without notice . I don't want to go to bed every night wondering not only what I will eat the next day , what it will do to me , but what might eat me .

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Okay, Bob. You clearly are NOT clued in on NAIS.  It is another multi-billion dollar government powergrab/corporate welfare program.

NAIS was written in the 90's by the National Institute of Animal Agriculture, a group of big factory farms (Confined Feeding Operations - CFO's) including Swift, Tyson, Cargill etc, RFID chip manufacturers including Digital Angel, and a number of government sponsored organizations like the useless Horse Council.  It's original stated purpose was to electronically tag and track every food animal so they (the big guys) could command higher prices on the foreign market with their exports.  Somewhere along the way they perceived that the average farmer was neither going to bankrupt himself for them nor submit to a system that was worse than anything Stalin ever thought up so they changed the stated mission to "safeguarding animal health" and sold it to the every increasingly power and money hungry USDA. 

It is a three step plan:

1.  Every person who owns any sort of livestock animal for any reason, including a single pony or pet chicken must be identified, his home must be assigned a government premises ID number and his home and GPS cooridinates must be entered into the massive new database.  There is still a bit squabbling over who gets to pick that big plum..

2.  Every animal:  cow, horse, chicken, fish, alpaca, anything that walks, flies or swims (except dogs and cats which are covered under a separate boondoggle) must then be implanted with an RFID chip and registered into the federal database. (Except for the big growers who wrote this of course, they can register their animals in large "lots" with a single chip and report per lot.)

3. Every movement of every animal off his home premises for any reason must be reported to the government withing 48 hours or the owner will suffer massive fines (stated as up to $1000 per day per violation).

If fifty heifers break down a fence and walk down the road, the owner must file fifty "they left" reports, fifty "where they went, who they contacted and when they returned" reports within fortyeight hours or face a potential of $50000 per day in fines. You saddle up and go trail riding, you have to report when you left, who you went with, where you went, when you came back.

Nearly all contaminated meat products occur in carelessly operated packing houses, not in live animals. This absurd tracking system will do NOTHING to improve animal health and great deal to get rid of small farmers who raise healthy, local food.  The excuses the USDA uses for this are usually Hoof and Mouth and Mad Cow diseases.  Hoof and Mouth is highly contagious but not fatal. Cattle recover from it in a few weeks. It is not transmissible to humans.  Mad Cow is not contagious at all but is a modified protein created by feeding cattle parts back to cattle.  That practice has been illegal in the US for many years. How many billions of taxpayer dollars and how many billions in increased food prices is this system worth?

The USDA came under such heat for this beyond Communist control plan (that was supposed to be mandatory in 2006 even though it was written in secret and virtually no one knew about it) that they have backed off and are calling in voluntary while bribing and pressuring states to make it mandatory.  They have paid massive bribes to FFA and 4-H and other organizations to get people to sign up. Many children were pressured to register their parents homes and farm without their parents knowledge. 

I hope this starts you on the road to understanding what this mess is really all about.  More government control, more money, more power.

Idi Amin said it best, "He who controls the food, controls the people."

 

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Nwnd,

You were very correct , I did not know and never stated that I did , but if what you posted is all there is , it really sounds like quality or disease control issue . I grant you that some will not be able to afford to follow these rigorous requirements but as I eat I will rest easier knowing I stand less of a chance buying food from livestock grown and produced in the USA . Big corporations will usually win out in cases where protecting consumers causes costs to outweigh income . But then again , 4H might remedy this by getting someone to donate whatever properties and improvements are required for the kids to qualify for big lot arrangements and discounts so they can go to the fair . If not , they might go back to how they did it in the real old days and have their own shows and auctions . Most of the animals / produce bought at 4H auctions are purchased for tax write off purposes by large companies anyway and the food usually sold at a barbecue or given to charity .

Where we as consumers have to watch it is foriegn , especially Chinese ag products are concerned  . Never thought I'd see the day when China could export food , many times I wish my dad would have sent mine over there when he used to remind us of the poor starving kids in China ,  shut up and eat those lima beans . LOL

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No, Bob, you are still missing the point.  The government wants to chip and track the movement of every living thing in the United States at the expense of the taxpayer and loss of all right to privacy.  This plan will do absolutely NOTHING to prevent disease.  The best it might be able to do is delegate blame after the fact.  In fact, people are rarely if ever sickened by animal disease.  The illness comes from dirty or careless packing houses allowing e-coli contamination.  NAIS is part of the "harmonizing" business with the UN.

This plan will be enforced on every animal owner in the country whether or not their animals are food animals and whether or not their animals are raised for their own consumption.  It is a grand scheme to put all live meat animals into the hands of a handful of producers that raise the animals under the worse possible conditions.  These big producers are the ones pumping animals (and the subsequent meat) full of steroids and antibiotics.  Ranch raised meat is healthy and not drugged. 

NAIS is in effect in Australia.  They have thousands of "ghost cattle" in the system.  The plan is costing $35 per animal per year. It doesn't work or produce anything useful at all except a lot of money for chip manufacturers. Can you imagine what that would do to the price of a chicken or pig? The horse market would be destroyed.  Who will buy his kid a pony when  it gives the government carte blanche to search their premises (some of us call them our homes) without warrant? How can my being forced to report to the government within fortyeight hours that I rode my horse in the woods behind my house possibly improve food safety?  This whole scheme is RealID for animals with a nightmare of a reporting system that accomplishes nothing.  The dog and cat version is in committee.

What you want is COOL, Country Of Origin Labeling, so you know whether that hamburger came from an inspected US facility or was shipped in as bulk hamburger from South America or China where it was packed under lord only knows what conditions.  That is a totally separate issue.  COOL was passed by Congress a few years ago but the USDA has heretofore refused to enforce it because the meat packers they seem to work for don't want it.  Once again, Congress is attempting to enforce COOL, and will hopefully succeed. NAIS will simply destroy small farmers in this country and deprive consumers of healthy, locally grown food.  Take a few minutes and check out www.nonais.org and www.libertyark.net for the full story.

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It might be as you say , but I know they are tracking cattle from birth to the slaughter house and a full lineage goes with . Same is supposedly happening with all meat and fowl . I read an article by the media on advancements in the FDA but it did say it wasn't a perfect plan yet . Some of the stuff that is scarry is we ship fowl to China for preparation and they ship it back for sale . How do we know if it is still ours ? And they are having the devil with bird flu .

I do know the chip people are going bonkers and want to put them in our children even , so you may just be right at which point it is bad . But back to the 4Hers , they will find a way to rise up above this too , all part of the plan to develop young farmers . I hope if you are right the 4H knocks the socks off the responsible parties they do have excellent legal support .

As for the steroids and such , another example of the elitist government , athletes are not supposed to , but lobbyists will pump everyone up . Time to clean house on a whole lot of areas .

Very interesting post

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Yes, cattle are already watched closely. There is no need at all for a multi-billion dollar program to make the chip manufacturers richer.  Most commercial fowl is raised in tiny cages.  These birds never leave their little cages for their four month life spans.  They are so fat they couldn't walk anyway.  It is quite disgusting.  It is these huge commercial growers that present the biggest disease threat because the animals are packed into such close proximity and they have exempted themselves from the expensive components of the plan.

If you want real quality food, find a local farm or ranch for your meat.  I won't even touch what is in the grocery stores because I don't know whether it is foreign, from a big grower and full of chemicals or what.  We can get locally grown elk and buffalo at a local store and beef from a local rancher who has had his herd for thirty years.  They slaughter, cut and wrap right there.  You know their cattle are healthy because you can out in the pasture and look. Vegetables and deli products are a problem too, since the FDA has approved spraying massive amounts of fluroride (brand name fluorofume) on vegetables and a cocktail of five viruses on deli meats.  The viruses are bacteriophages, designed to eat the bacteria that cause botcellism (sp?) but who knows how they will mutate over time or what else they might eat to survive?

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They just keep messing with Mother Nature, all in the name of progress.  We could pay more for food if that's what it takes, instead we want the big screen t.v.'s and the next best electronic gadget.   I geus with half the country on food stamps the government has to keep the food prices down.  So we all pay, and who is to say all these chemicals have not effected the brains of our illustrious leaders.   I wonder who the stockholders are in this chip company?  What ever happened to conflict of interest? 

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Well, former Senator Rick Santorum, who wrote the senate version of the PAWS bill got caught with his fingers in the cookie jar while trying to force everyone to microchip dogs and cats.  He was voted out last election.  Here is a revealing story: http://dogpolitics.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/09/the_paws_bill_r.html  Tommy Thompson is a key player as well, getting a fat consulting fee from Digial Angel.

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Excellent posts nwind, You have your facts correct.

Big brother can track a calf almost from the minute it hits the ground and for the rest of it's life. BUT, it can't find 20 MILLION illegals roaming over the entire USA.  Somethings is wrong here!

nwind said:

Yes, cattle are already watched closely. There is no need at all for a multi-billion dollar program to make the chip manufacturers richer.  Most commercial fowl is raised in tiny cages.  These birds never leave their little cages for their four month life spans.  They are so fat they couldn't walk anyway.  It is quite disgusting.  It is these huge commercial growers that present the biggest disease threat because the animals are packed into such close proximity and they have exempted themselves from the expensive components of the plan.

If you want real quality food, find a local farm or ranch for your meat.  I won't even touch what is in the grocery stores because I don't know whether it is foreign, from a big grower and full of chemicals or what.  We can get locally grown elk and buffalo at a local store and beef from a local rancher who has had his herd for thirty years.  They slaughter, cut and wrap right there.  You know their cattle are healthy because you can out in the pasture and look. Vegetables and deli products are a problem too, since the FDA has approved spraying massive amounts of fluroride (brand name fluorofume) on vegetables and a cocktail of five viruses on deli meats.  The viruses are bacteriophages, designed to eat the bacteria that cause botcellism (sp?) but who knows how they will mutate over time or what else they might eat to survive?

 

Small farmers do present the most safe food as they can not afford to lose any of their investment , a very good point . Because they cannot afford large feed pens , the catle even get much needed exercise and the marbleing in the meat shows it along with far more taste . RockyMtn1776 has another good point , but how do you tie a bell on a cat you are not allowed to catch ? Not allowed by our own government which is supposed to provide protection of the country . But an interesting combination suggestion with the "Tamperproof ID" , if the fools allow more temporaries into our nation , install chips on them , not us .

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