FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 12, 2006 FROM: VIRGINIA INDEPENDENT CONSUMERS AND FARMERS ASSOCIATION

RE: PROPOSED LEGISLATION OFFERS BAIT AND SWITCH TO U.S. FARMERS CONTACT: RICHARD BEAN 434.263.8704 DEBORAH STOCKTON 434.295.7176

Proposed legislation would offer a classic bait and switch to U.S. farmers. A proposed bill would allow exempting animals from a national licensing system who never leave a farm premise but would allow full requirements at sale barns, butcher shops or private neighbor-to-neighbor transactions.

Obviously, that is not much of an exemption.

The Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association says the bill, introduced by Senator Jim Talent and Representative Jo Ann Emerson to ensure the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) is a voluntary program, lacks adequate safeguards. VICFA President Richard Bean commented, "While we appreciate that Senator Talent and Representative Emerson introduced this bill, it leaves uncertainties about the NAIS."

VICFA says the Talent-Emerson bill would allow the USDA to regulate meatpackers, processors, veterinary or other services farmers must use so that farmers would be required to participate in the identification program to have access to these services. Anyone who did not volunteer could be forced into "volunteering" or face ruin.

"If this bill were to become law, the USDA could effectively exempt us and put us out of business at the same time," says VICFA spokesman and farmer Joel Salatin.

VICFA warns that the bill's failure to define "voluntary" could be a disaster for family farms, small livestock operations and sustainable agriculture.

In September 2005, before the House Agriculture Committee, Canadian and Australian officials testified that the best way to start a mandatory national animal identification program is with a "voluntary" program, then transition to mandatory.

The USDA has already advised that small producers will not have to participate as long as an animal never leaves the farm and is consumed on the farm but virtually no farmers meet this very narrow requirement, most regularly buy and sell livestock. Even homesteaders who produce for themselves often sell their surplus.

In July of 2006 VICFA formed the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Advocates Fund (NICFA Fund) to oppose "any government funded or managed National Identification System."

VICFA says if a program is needed to open foreign markets as the USDA claims, the marketplace will provide the system and the government should not force family farms to pay for a program mainly supported by industrial agricultural interests.

VICFA member Deborah Stockton summed up NAIS as, "Just another piece of USDA corporate welfare."

Mary Zanoni, Ph.D., J.D., of Farm for Life in Canton, New York says,

"Section 2 of the proposed bill is extremely detrimental to the opponents of NAIS, in two respects, first, Section 2 purports to create a FOIA exemption for 'voluntary' NAIS information. This would allow, for example, Vermont to continue with its premises registration program that was suspended due to FOIA concerns. It also implicitly gives the USDA the 'cover' of FOIA protection to continue its current so-called 'voluntary' program, which is highly coercive.

Second, the very fact that this bill is couched as an 'amendment' to the Animal Health Protection Act [AHPA] is a back-door and underhanded way to create arguable congressional 'approval' for the oppressive actions the USDA has already taken, under what the USDA claimed to be the authority of the AHPA.

As things presently stand, the AHPA gives the USDA no authority to create NAIS.

Congress should not create 'back-door' authority and underhanded de facto authorization of the USDA's prior offensive NAIS activities, by purporting to 'amend' the AHPA."

"Let Congress address all NAIS issues openly and above board, in the orderly process of the 2007 Farm Bill," said Dr. Zanoni.

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