If there is anything in the world sweeter than standing amid 200 chickens underneath flowering apple trees on one of the most beautiful farms I've ever seen, I don't know what it is. This was taken a little more than a week ago at Everett Family Farm, here in Soquel, just a couple of miles from our house. These chickens belong to Mike Irving and Teresa Kurtak (pictured below), who met each other at last year's Eco-Farm conference, just as today's guest author, Jim Dunlop, met his beautiful wife, Rebecca Thistlethwaite.
The idea that sights like this might become imperiled if NAIS (National Animal Identification System) is implemented on a mandatory basis continues to alarm me. The response I got from the people I know who raise animals has been consistent: they're cheering this post.
I try very hard not to take anything beautiful for granted—I'm aware that there are people who read this site who may never in their lives have the chance to visit California, or even to visit a farm. My long-stated hope in visiting farms is that I might awaken in someone far away a curiosity about where their local farms are, and their local farmers. I think any small farm should give a visitor the feeling of an oasis: water in a society parched for real, lasting beauty. At least, that's what they do for me.
When I saw Mike and Teresa at the Slow Food USA dinner on April 1, they invited me to come see the chickens, which have all grown up and started laying. And laying, and laying. Fifteen dozen eggs a day.
So I visited with Logan, who helped gather eggs—until the critical mass was achieved (three broken eggs) and we had to relieve him of his duties. Mike and Teresa hadn't even heard of NAIS, which also alarmed me—time to get on the warpath down at Eco-Farm, somebody, please.
Anyway, two days after this visit, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a comment on my weblog from one of my true heroes: Jim Dunlop, who runs TLC (Tastes Like Chicken) Ranch out in Las Lomas.
We had a little dialog as follows. First his comment:
Right on, Tana!! Thanks for letting people know about the USDA/Monsanto /ADM/ Cargill's most recent attempt to rid the country of small farmers. I'm not going to wax on about this, because it's not my style and I've got to get back to my 6:30am to 8pm workday, but let me just say that if the USDA wants to come to enforce NAIS protocols on my ranch (including putting chips in all my pigs), then they had better bring guns. Lots of guns. It reminds me of the lyrics to a favorite Clash song: "when they kick in your front door, how ya gonna go -Shot down on the pavement or waiting in death row." Make mine "shot down on the pavement," please. I know ranchers in Montana who buy guns with the money that they should (by law) pay in income tax. They've known for a long time that the war was coming to the countryside. Does the government really want to pick a fight with America's farmers and ranchers? It seems so. So I'll take a rare chance to quote my President, "bring it on." If they think that a war on the other side of the world is a mess, then they are really not going to like the hornet's nest they stir up with this NAIS scam. By the way, avian flu is another scam. There is no limit to what the government will do in order to fleece Americans out of their hard-earned dollars. Do you go to bed at night worrying about bird flu? If you want to worry, worry about something real, like the plain old flu for example. Well, here I am waxing on—when what I really need to do is check and make sure the pigs aren't uncomfortable. Jim Dunlop (pig luva, farmer, soil builder and combat veteran of mother green's killing machine)
Jim is a veteran of the first Bush-sponsored Gulf War, but you wouldn't know it unless he told you. (And no, I do not worry about avian flu: I'm not phobic that way.)
When I asked Jim for permission to create a special post for his thoughts, he added more:
I think that you have just scratched the surface on the whole NAIS thing and if you talk to any livestock farmer, they will tell you how opposed to it they are. I am just one of the many. Some resources are ACRESUSA and Stockman Grass farmer.
Important questions to ask oneself are: why don't we stop exporting beef when we import beef as well? After all, the whole NAIS thing is proposed as a way to insure the security of our overseas market for beef.
The USDA and Corporate Ag love it when something like mad cow or Avian flu comes down the pike. This gives them the perfect opportunity to portray the American livestock farmer as a know-nothing, shit-on-his-boots, dumbshit that is spreading disease to all the so-called responsible livestock warehouse technicians.
What swine disease is NAIS going to stop? What horse disease is it going to stop? My chickens would laugh in the face of avian flu if they could laugh. I see ducks and geese in close proximity to my birds and I don't give it a second thought, except for to think that if my clients are getting a flu, they are wasting their time because if they are eating eggs from my chickens then they are already vaccinated.
Why don't we spend our efforts on finding ways to raise livestock in ways that don't make them susceptible to antibiotic resistant campylobactor, salmonella, E-coli and others? This whole thing about E-coli is raining down on all livestock farmers—as I knew it would when I saw the first news of the spinach outbreak.
I have already stopped some farming practices that I know to be good for the earth and the humans who consume the products of the earth and everyone involved. Why? The answer is that I don't want my neighbors to lose their ass just because I had my pigs on their harvested fields for two months out of the year.
Which brings me to another sad point. After gaining the confidence of my neighbor farmers and grazing their cull vegetable crops in the past couple of years, that shit is over!! Why? Not because we think that there is anything wrong with grazing livestock on harvested fields, a.k.a. "gleaning," or "making the most of what you have," but because we are all scared of the kneejerk reaction of the government and the media, AKA bitches the government.
Well, I occasionally check the web statistics to see who's been referring me and why. Today I found a link to Walter Jeffrie's "NoNAIS.org" site, and something completely creepy there. North Carolina is now making NAIS a requirement for kids to register their "premises" if they want to enter an animal into the county fair. THIS IS ILLEGAL.
As best I understand it, it's the USDA's intention that 100% "cooperation" be achieved, through tactics like requiring 4H'ers to register their premise—sometimes without their parents' knowledge.
For more information that is guaranteed to puncture your complacency, go to the Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association. Download their "talking points"—the first one is best. (I wish they didn't have so many PDFs, which make copying and pasting relevant text so difficult.)
Kim Severson, are you reading? (This seems like it would be right up her alley: research and articulate argument.) I don't know why The Big Guns—Michael Ruhlman, Michael Pollan—aren't coming out against this shit, but maybe someone will.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?" —Ray Bradbury
Thanks for visiting. Go kick some NAIS booty.
Careful what you say, Jim. Check out NONAIS.org for the Henshaw Incident.
They came for the Henshaw's swine with guns drawn and slaughtered their whole herd, stole their life, killed their pets and held them bound for the costs. Why? PsuedoRabies--or the trumped up claim of it.
Danny Henshaw was ex-law enforcement and he was treated as a criminal and held against all resaon as a prioner in his home while the USDA and local game officials took action on his farm.
It's one thing to fight NAIS--it's another to do it sensibly. The feds, and their corporate paymasters want us stamped out. They have the money, they power , and the corrupt legal system to beat us down unless we stand together. Little good will it do the cause if the best people fall first.
As for Michael Pollan, I tried early on to alert him of the seriousness of this program, and he doesn't seem outwardly interested in speaking out openly against it, which is a shame. WA State is on the brink of declaring farming illegal for all but the deepest of pockets through fees, fines and regulations. A new department is being formed to replace the FDA and USDA's food inspection regulatory systems--there are clauses in its draft which will make animal ID and veggie ID mandatory stipulations to have what amounts to a license to farm--or rather, be a slave to the corporate food system.
We need to organize by locale, group, farmers market, cooperative and stand in unison against NAIS, or divided we fall.
All the best.
Posted by: Podchef | 24 April 2007 at 07:43 PM
Small Farmers Journal edited by Lynn Miller and company is another great resource for talk on NAIS
Posted by: Chris | 24 April 2007 at 07:54 PM
http://farmandranchfreedom.org
This is a site for updates and information about NAIS
I am not really surprised that some farmers have not heard about it. I think USDA has been trying to sneak up on us. I am sure most of the American public is as unaware of NAIS as they are about GMO's.
Posted by: Carol | 25 April 2007 at 07:46 AM
I think the reason the media isn't hot on this story is because it's not really a story yet. it still is voluntary. in order for it to be otherwise, the usda would have legislate it, or put some kind of regulations into effect, both of which would be a big hurdle and if that came, then they'd come out blazing.
nevertheless, it's still important in the blogging world for small farms to remain very vocal about this suspicious project.
Posted by: ruhlman | 26 April 2007 at 06:13 AM
Wow, thanks for the enlightenment, Tana.
Posted by: Kristin Ohlson | 26 April 2007 at 04:18 PM
It's not voluntary in Wisconsin but there still aren't many stories about it. Too bad, because it's going to take a lot of people by (significantly expensive) surprise.
Posted by: Northwoods Baby | 27 April 2007 at 08:18 PM
wow...SOMEONE woke up with their
knickers all atwist this morning.
Posted by: Marci | 29 April 2007 at 08:36 AM
Hey, just stumbled upon your blog. Hope you are still fighting the good fight with regards to NAIS. Nebraska just passed a bill making NAIS permanently voluntary there with an opt out as well. That's good! USDA is hearing us, that's for sure. There is a Farm Food Voices doodah in Washington DC on March 5th. Check out VICFA.net for the details.
Peaceably,
Hen
Posted by: Henwhisperer | 14 February 2008 at 05:42 PM
I investigated Humane groups on behalf of show dog breeders. The NAIS is only a tip of the overall picture. Humane groups were paid 100 million by corporations to shut down every animal breeder in the United States. Your in for a fight.
Posted by: Jayne | 19 February 2008 at 09:10 AM
NAIS can be fought by calling your elected offal and telling them your chicken/horse/cow/ votes...yes they may be taking bribes from big ag, but it is our vote that puts them in or takes them out of office and they know that.
Posted by: stephen | 17 June 2008 at 11:33 AM