NAIS should be fixed or forgotten

Four days before the seventh and final “listening session” June 1 to gather producer comments on NAIS, the National Animal Identification System, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced USDA would host six additional meetings for the public “to voice their concerns about the current NAIS system and offer potential solutions.” The extra meetings are either a master stroke by a shrewd political operator or a bureaucratic blunder by a Washington, D.C. rookie. Master stroke because Vilsack, an early and ardent supporter of NAIS, heard nothing good about national animal ID since taking his (presumably ear-tagged and registered) dog-and-pony show on the road May 14. Wherever it went—Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Washington State, Texas—producer after producer greeted it with anger and derision. Most used their three minutes of microphone fame to condemn NAIS as unnecessary, unworkable and un-American. Detractors easily outnumbered backers—mostly masters of the vertical integration universe: meatpackers and their lackeys—10-, 15- even 20-to-1...While mandatory animal identification is endlessly sold to lawmakers and consumers as a key element in new food safety regulations, producers have repeatedly pointed out that NAIS only tracks trouble after it occurs; it doesn’t prevent it. As such, it is not a food safety tool as much as a liability-assigning tool and no farmer wants a new expressway built between him and the federal courthouse...DailyRepublic