Paul Revere’s Ride The warning is being sent out, loud and clear, will we hear and react in time?

By Karin Bergener

West Nile Virus, Bird Flu, Mad Cow -increasingly, it seems there are more and more animal diseases to worry about. Our horses are important to us and we want them safe and healthy.

One solution, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), is the National Animal Identification System - NAIS. Maybe you haven’t heard about NAIS, or how it will impact you and your horse, or what will be required of you should it go through. Well, ready or not… with or without your knowledge, here it comes.

NAIS was conceived by commercial meat producers and microchip manufacturers, then developed by the USDA for the states to implement. It requires every owner of every single horse (and lots of other animals) to register their farm or home with the government for GPS monitoring; microchip or electronically tag each individual animal; and then report every time that horse steps off the property (including trail rides, vet visits, escapes, shows, training, etc.).

While the original stated purpose was to facilitate overseas sales of American grown meat products, it is now being proffered as a disease control measure. Currently the federal program is described as voluntary, but states are implementing their own versions, some of which are mandatory. There is much here that needs to be examined and ultimately decided by the people who will be affected by it - the American public

What is NAIS?

THERE ARE THREE MAIN PARTS TO the NAIS: registration, tagging and tracking.

• Premises Registration

  Each and every farm or home that has even one head of livestock from the list of covered animals, and each place where these animals are commingled, such as vets, shows, and riding lessons, must be registered with the government as a “premises.”

  Each premises is assigned a 7-digit “premises ID number” keyed to Global Positioning System coordinates, and listed in a government database, which includes the owner’s name, address, and telephone number.

• Animal Tagging

  Each individual animal will be assigned a 15-digit ID number by the government.* You will be required to tag every animal you own that is on the list, and report the application of every animal’s ID tag.

  So far, individual states are allowed to change their list: for instance, in Texas, parakeets and other “exotic” birds are included. Horses are not on every state list as of yet, but horses are on the list of the federal Draft Strategic Plan, which serves as the guideline for all state plans.

  The first three digits identify your animal as “American” as part of an international data system.

  The form of ID required for horses will most likely be a tag or microchip containing a Radio Frequency Identification Device, designed to be read from a distance. The plan may also include collecting DNA and/or a retinal scan from every animal.

  *Some animals, such as pigs and poultry owned by large producers, may have a “group” identifier assigned instead of individual numbers.

• Animal Tracking

  Under NAIS, the owner of each animal will be required to report that animal’s movements to the government. As defined in the Draft Strategic Plan, if you own any of the animals on the list, this means reporting every time an animal leaves or enters the property, loses a tag, has a tag replaced, goes missing or dies.

  Every time an animal goes onto or off of a premises, a report would be required to show that the tagged animal had been on each of these other premises. A ride across a neighbor’s
  land, for instance, would require you to file a report of your horse leaving and returning to your land, as well as a report of it entering and leaving the neighbor’s. These reports must be filed within 24 hours.

Why this registration, tagging, and tracking? The USDA claims that this will enable them, within 48 hours of finding a diseased animal, to track back its movements and deter-mine all other animals that might be at risk of having that disease.

The plan also calls for veterinarians to report animals that aren’t tagged or registered to the authorities. There are no exceptions; under the USDA plan all livestock owners will be required to register and report even if they raise animals only for their own food or keep horses as companions or for draft or transportation. Religious exceptions are not allowed.

The USDA plans to enforce the rules against livestock farmers who don’t comply, either federally, or through the states. Examples include proposed Texas regulations for fines of up to $1,000 per day plus criminal penalties for those who fail to register their premises and Vermont has indicated that it is considering fines of up to $5,000 per incident.

Of course, being able to stymie a potential outbreak of animal disease sounds like a very worthy goal, but there are those who feel the requirements imposed on ordinary citizens are excessive, intrusive and not able to deliver the proposed goal. The public has had little opportunity to comment, on this program, let alone vote on it.

NAIS History 101

THE CONCEPT OF AN ELECTRONIC national animal identification system was started back in the early 1990s by technology companies and large agricultural corporations as a marketing tool, intended to assure overseas meat buyers of America’s untainted meat products. Their efforts culminated in 2002, when the National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA) proposed that the USDA develop NAIS.

NIAA’s membership reads like a who’s who in industrial agriculture and technology, including Cargill Meat, Monsanto, National Pork Producers Council, Digital Angel, Inc., Micro Beef Technologies, Ltd., and Global Vet Link, as well as The American Horse Council and the American Quarter Horse Association.

While NAIS is now touted as needed for disease tracking, it was actually developed more than a year and a half before the first case of Mad Cow was found in the U.S. The USDA and NIAA worked together to develop the NAIS and inform the large-scale livestock producer community of its impending launch, although livestock owners outside of this community – including most horse owners - were not effectively informed or invited to comment.

The Federal Plan

THE USDA HAS BEEN DEVELOPING the NAIS plan through “working groups,” made up primarily of representatives from government agencies, large agribusinesses, and technology companies. There is a separate group for each animal on the list. They do not meet jointly, so there is no sharing of information between, say, the sheep group and the horse group.

Though these working groups are meant to represent the interests of the people directly affected by the NAIS, notably absent are significant representatives of pet owners, recre-ational animal owners, and small farmers and ranchers. Much of the work of these workgroups has yet to be completed; however, implementation of the program is going forward
with or without their input.

On April 25, 2005, the USDA released Draft Program Standards and a Draft Strategic Plan (“Plan”) for the NAIS. The USDA has stated that the Animal Health Protection Act of 2002 is the source of its authority to do this, but that statute addresses only the import and export of animals, interstate travel, quarantine areas, and related programs, not privately owned recreational animals, such as horses.

Two Congresses have tried, but failed, to pass legislation that would amend the Act to provide for a mandatory electronic tracking system for individual heads of livestock. Currently, there are three bills in Congress, trying to give postdated authority to the NAIS - HR 3170, and two companion bills, HR 1254 & 1256. If USDA is correct in asserting that it has authority, why does Congress keep attempting to pass legislation to give it to them?

On April 6, 2006, the USDA presented its new Implementation Plan. Even though the NAIS was introduced as voluntary, this plan sets forth goals for compliance. While the plan still speaks of voluntary participation, it also states that if 100% participation isn’t reached by voluntary means, the USDA will seek rules that make participation mandatory.

In a Dow Jones article, dated March 23, 2006, Michael Johanns, Secretary of the USDA, stated that USDA will not wait for the 2007 Farm Bill because they don’t want to be “slowed down.” In that same article he stated that the program must eventually be mandatory. So, while it may take some time to get there, the ultimate goal is clear.

Have I Voluntarily Registered?

THE APRIL 2006 PLAN ALSO PRESENTED the concept of the federal government gathering information from multiple state and private databases, rather than building a single federal database.

To that end, premises registration is well underway. Many states receive funding from USDA based on the number of premises they have registered. Early registrations have been met by taking data from existing databases, such as your breed association, or other govern-ment database, and dumping it into the NAIS database as part of the “voluntary” registration process. A livestock industry official in Ohio stated that the Scrapies (sheep) program and National Poultry Improvement Plan databases had been used to fill the Ohio database.

If you have answered a federal or state agriculture survey you have likely been registered. These registrations have been listed as voluntary, whether people willingly participated or not, or had knowledge that they ere being registered.

The Equine Species Working Group

THE AMERICAN HORSE COUNCIL (AHC) REPORTS ON ITS WEBSITE www.horsecouncil.org/equineid “In Fall, 2003, the American Horse Council organized a task force that included nearly thirty national equine organizations. Its purpose was to evaluate the concept of a national ID system and to determine if the horse industry could develop standards for equine identification that would benefit the industry and be compatible with the plans being considered.” It goes on to list the members and discuss subcommittees of the working group.

The Equine Species Working Group (ESWG) is just one of the many species working groups established by USDA to advise it on how NAIS will be implemented for their species: not if, but how. It is alarming that so many groups and individuals view NAIS as something that we have no choice in; that it is inevitable, regardless of what the public wants. This, and the illusion that “it’s not my problem” are the two greatest obstacles to a sane, sensible, fair assessment of the plan.

The Equine Species Working Group Panel (according to the AHC website as of May 2006) includes representatives of a number of associations with gaited horse connections, including the American Saddlebred Horse Association, Palomino Horse Breeders of America, American Endurance Ride Conference, American Horse Council, Back Country Horsemen of America, Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders’ & Exhibitors’ Association, U. S. Trotting Association, and the Paso Fino Horse Association.

Membership in the ESWG has been traded among member organizations. J. Amelita Facchiano, now listed as representing the USDA, was previously the Vice President for Sales and Marketing for Global Vet Link, and served on the EWSG in that capacity. With individual representatives switching sides, at what point do they represent whom?

The ESWG states that if the NAIS “becomes mandatory the horse industry [must ensure on its own that it] can operate within its guide-lines. If we do not do it, others will do it for us.”

But who does “us” refer to? The only way for our associations to represent “us,” on any issue, is to first be sure the membership is informed about all aspects of the issue, then to poll the members as to their opinions. Few have done so in regards to NAIS.

So Why Do We Need NAIS?

THE PROMOTED RATIONALE FOR THIS PROGRAM IS TO PROTECT AGAINST animal disease by providing 48-hour traceback of all animal movements. Proponents raise the specter of Mad Cow, foot and mouth, avian flu, and other “foreign animal diseases.” But, once you scratch the surface, there’s no real substance to the arguments that the proposed traceback system can prevent any of these diseases.

For example, Mad Cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE) is not a contagious disease. As Judith McGeary, director of Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, points out, “studies show that BSE is not

transmitted to embryos from infected cows. Further, BSE is contracted not from other cows, but from eating feed containing contaminated animal products.” Thus, tracking down which other cows rubbed shoulders with an infected cow provides no value, unless it can be shown that they ate the same food over their lifetimes.

More importantly, the U.S. has already been very effective in finding cases with the current system of tracking cattle - a system of interlocking safeguards that the USDA regularly refers to as effective in protecting our food supply. So, NAIS is not needed to control BSE.

Likewise, working programs already exist that track diseases in other livestock. The U.S. has had no major outbreak of hoof and mouth since 1929. The National Poultry Improvement Plan has effectively controlled pullorum in poultry. The Scrapies Program works fine in sheep.

In their drive to include horses in the NAIS, the AHC cites rabies, salmonella, ringworm, leptospirosis, brucellosis, and anthrax as diseases that must be controlled in horses, even though they rarely occur in the U.S. and are effectively dealt with when they do.

Knowing that U.S. control of such diseases has been excellent thus far, questions about NAIS are bound to arise. For instance, given the burden, expense and government intrusion of regis-tration, tagging and tracking, is the possibility of these diseases enough of a threat that the NAIS is a reasonable solution? When vaccines are available for some of them, such as rabies? And, can one method of disease control be the right solution for every species and all diseases?

The USDA has stated that NAIS is also necessary to protect the U.S.’s export market. Horse slaughter is a sensitive topic in the U.S., but in terms of total meat production, a minor one.

The companies that would benefit from federal tracking are large, multinational corporations, predominantly producers of pork, poultry, and beef. But exports would be just as well served with a voluntary program, allowing the market to determine how valuable it is to track animals from birth to death. Farmers wishing to export animals or food to other countries could enroll in the program; and exporters could refuse to buy from anyone not enrolled.

There is no reason to impose the heavy burdens of NAIS on the thousands of farmers, ranchers, homesteaders, and companion animal owners who have no interest in being part of the commercial food chain.

Problems with NAIS

HAVING WEIGHED THE POSSIBLE benefits against the known costs, it becomes clear that the NAIS is impractical on several levels.

Financial Cost
The costs will roll downhill to the smallest producer and individual animal owners. Whether paid with tax dollars or through private enterprise, the staggering costs of this program will come from the citizens of America whether they own livestock or not - either in higher taxes or increased costs of purchasing animals and animal products.

The cost to microchip or tag each animal depends on the species and who does it. For horses it can range from around $20 to do it yourself, to $35 or so for a microchipping service, to $180 or more for a veterinary 'house call'. Factor in the time involved in keeping track of all their registrations, and filing reports within 24 hours of every trail ride, vet visit, or lesson, and the costs expand dramatically. In other countries that have adopted mandatory premises and animal identification and tracking, costs have multiplied to twelve times the original fees per animal.

It’s only a matter of time before people begin to decide it’s just not worth the bother to tag, track and report on horses anymore. Fewer owners will mean fewer customers for farriers, feed stores, trainers and others whose livelihood depends on a thriving horse industry. Over time, this would devastate the equine community, which until now, has been a living tribute to our American heritage.

System Reliability
It would be foolhardy to believe that microchips are failsafe. A recent New York Times article, by John Markoff (3/15/06) revealed that microchips are subject to software viruses. Because the NAIS was set up as an international meat marketing program, the type of microchip tech-nology selected for NAIS is ISO technology, developed by the International Standards Organization (ISO) for multi-national use. It has been used in Europe for a long time and has one salient fault: it uses open code software that can easily be reprogrammed.

Someone who wanted to introduce a sick animal into the food supply could easily change the animal’s microchip and slip it into the system. Want to place the blame for a sick animal on someone else? Reprogram the tag. Want to create chaos at a livestock auction? Infect the tags with viruses. Want to steal a horse? Destroy the microchip embedded in the horses’ neck and insert a counterfeit one of your own.

System Compatibility
Another complication is that ISO technology is not the same as the microchips used in the past in the U.S. It cannot be read with the same equipment already in use. ISO chips transmit information on a radio frequency of 134.2 kHZ, while non-ISO microchips already implanted in the U.S. transmit at a frequency of 125 kHZ. So to participate in the NAIS Veterinarians will have to invest in separate systems for private identification and government required identification.

Microchipping your horse to guard against theft or loss may still be a wise thing - but know the technology used. Until or unless ISO scanners become standard in veterinary offices, sale barns, and with law enforcement, a horse microchipped with an ISO chip may not be protected at all. What good is a microchip that can’t be read?

Regardless, presently the plan is for the NAIS database to be confidential. It’s not yet known if owners would be able to access it to find a lost or stolen horse. It’s also unlikely that people other than owners would be able to use the database to check, for instance, if the person selling them a horse was the owner listed in the database. Thus, don’t expect NAIS to mean that your horse is identified for personal use.

Enforcement
The logistics of actually tagging and tracking animals would dwarf any government program in existence. How can a government that can’t track foreigners with expired visas, expect to track annual reports of movement or tagging of animals that number in the hundreds of millions?

The Database Myth
Databases are only as good as their design and the data that goes into them. The NAIS plan does not adequately address who will create and support the software, create and maintain the web-based interface, or train all the people who input data to do it correctly.

In the April 2006 plan, the USDA proposes that it will harvest data from multiple existing databases, run by states and breed groups. If the data wasn’t originally input with the intention of it meshing with other databases, it won’t work. If you’ve ever upgraded your computer, or changed from one program with an address book to another, you know that information doesn’t just automatically translate from one program to another.

How could the USDA even be sure data mined from such sources is accurate? Has your information ever popped up on a database with an error?

Also, that 24-hour deadline for filing reports assumes they will be filed electronically. Even though the USDA apparently assumes that all animal owners have easy access to the Internet, estimates are that as many as 50% of livestock owners don’t even own a computer. How will those who fill out forms and mail them to the government for inputting meet the 24-hour reporting requirement? Paper reports will create a backlog of astounding proportions; by comparison, a regional federal office managing data on breeding and sale of wild bird species admits it is six months behind with its data input.

Constitutional Issues
Even if there was some measurable disease control value for the NAIS, the social and personal costs are indefensible. The possibility of disease cannot justify the intrusion into our privacy and property rights.

Property
Legally, livestock animals are a form of personal property. The NAIS plan refers to a “national herd”, indicating a government vision in which private ownership rights are no more; no one will be allowed to birth, acquire, own, or transfer livestock without government permission.

Privacy
It is unprecedented for the United States government to conduct large-scale computer-aided surveillance of its citizens simply because they own a common type of property.

The NAIS would actually subject the owner of a horse to far more surveillance than the owner of a gun. You can freely take a shotgun to your neighbor’s property, but if your children ride their ponies there, that will have to be registered with the government. Recall that the microchips and RFID tags are designed to be read from a distance. It’s feasible that government agents could check your compliance from the roadside without your knowledge
or consent, something the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution defines as “illegal search”.

Already in effect in many areas, the pilfering of existing databases to fulfill “voluntary registration” violates all expectation of privacy on which those databases were built.

Religious Freedom
Certain religious groups raise their own food animals and use animals in farming and transportation. For example, the Amish obviously cannot comply with the USDA’s computerized, technology-dependent system. You don’t have to be of the same religion to know that forcing people to violate their religious beliefs in the name of the NAIS is wrong.

Equine Quality of Life
Certainly not the least of our concerns as horsemen is how this Plan will affect our horses.

For some the effects will be gradual, for others immediate. Those with owners who find the NAIS intolerable, may quickly find themselves on the auction block, or the chopping block. How many who have not been tagged will go without necessary veterinary care for fear of veterinarians acting as government informants? And how many, over time, will be left standing, waiting, as their owners think twice about reporting every move?

So Who Wins with the NAIS?

IF THE NAIS WILL BE EXPENSIVE AND intrusive for individual animal owners, and bring no measurable improvement in disease control, who will benefit from it?

As the original birth parents of NAIS, the integrated food livestock producers will gain when they market products overseas.
Companies who sell microchipping systems, scanning equipment and the database software will see a megaboom in sales.

Federal and state agriculture departments responsible for implementing and monitoring the NAIS will ensure their own job security.

Companies or organizations that run species databases will reap tremendous rewards as they will be able to charge as they like, for handling the government mandated registration and reporting.

Shifting to State Actions

THIS SPRING HAS SEEN A SHIFT IN THE NAIS from a centralized federal system to separate venues in each of the 50 states. At just about the time the USDA announced that it would not be using a national privatized data-base, the states sprang to individual action. As of May 2006, here is a sampling of activity with regard to animal identification programs in the states:

• Maryland: Registration of all poultry facilities required, starting with backyard flocks, then commercialflocks.
• Missouri: The Missouri Senate has adopted a resolution urging that NAIS be kept voluntary. (Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 31.) The House is considering an even stronger resolution, stating that the Missouri General Assembly would “strongly oppose any mandatory” NAIS. House Committee Substitute for House Concurrent Resolution No. 33.)
• Texas: The Texas Animal Health Commission proposed mandatory premises registration, but has now delayed it until 2007. Representative Bryan Hughes has introduced HB 47 to amend last session’s HB 1361, which established premises registration. Amendment will make premises registration voluntary.
• Tennessee: Rep. Frank Nicely is working on alternative legislation, HB 3297; proposal includes non-electronic tags. Legislation has been put in study committee.
• Vermont: Hearings were held April 11, 2006. Vermont Agency of Agriculture will be making rule regarding premises registration public soon. Agency officials have said there will be three public comment hearings scheduled for June. The rule would affect all owners of animals except, at this time, cats and dogs. A final rule is expected to be brought to legislators for approval within six months.
• Wisconsin: Mandatory registration of all premises housing any animal other than a cat, dog, or rabbit became effective January 1, 2006. Places with fish or exotic birds such as parrots, lovebirds, parakeets, are included.

As the above show, there will be great variability from state to state. If you show, compete or trail ride in a number of states, how will you determine what you must do to comply in different states?

The Result of NAIS

WHETHER IT IS THE INTENT OF LARGE-SCALE PRODUCERS, OR NOT, THE RESULT OF NAIS will be to reduce dramatically - if not destroy - small acreage livestock owners and companion animal owners.

If fully adopted and implemented, the likely outcome of NAIS is that animal ownership increasingly will become limited to large commercial entities that can afford to comply and who are willing to accept the governmental intrusion.

ID Tags

No larger than a grain of rice, microchips are implanted in horses via injection. A scanner activates the chip, which transmits the horse’s ID number via radio waves.

It is reasonably foreseeable that NAIS will:

• drive small producers and their supporting suppliers (feed stores, auction houses, etc) out of existence;
• cause people to abandon raising animals for their own food and as pets;
• invade Americans’ personal privacy to a degree never before tolerated;
• deprive Americans of their property rights;
• violate the religious freedom of Americans whose beliefs make it impossible for them to comply;
• cost the American economy far more than it will deliver.

Movement Against Animal ID

OPPOSITION AGAINST NAIS and state programs is growing. In April 2006, the Liberty Ark Coalition was formed to bring together people working against mandatory animal identification.

For more information see, “Coalition Against Animal ID”.

This article should not be used as legal advice, which can only be given by an attorney licensed to practice law in the relevant jurisdiction - and who is familiar with the facts of an individual matter. The information is cur-rent as of May 1, 2006. Readers should examine the relevant statutes and rules.

About the Author
Karin Bergener is an attorney and agricultural law activist in Ohio. She has been a therapist, mediator, and arbitrator. Her legal career spans corporate, tax, and estate planning law. Currently, she works managing information technology contracts and practices estate planning and business law. She raises chickens and ducks, and shows her Khaki Campbell ducks. She has a Morgan/Arab cross, Justin, who does dressage, jumps, and drives, although both Karin and Justin would rather be on the trail than anywhere else. She can be reached through LibertyArk.