Transcript of Harrisburg NAIS listening session

For those who are interested, here's the full transcript of the morning half of the NAIS listening session I went to in Harrisburg in May. There's a lot there to read--54 pages. I don't intend to wade through it all myself. (I heard it the first time, after all.) I would encourage you, though, to search (Ctrl + F) Darol Dickinson. His comments were the highlight of the day for me. Oh, and here's the transcript from the afternoon breakout session I was in, too. I noticed they made a few errors in transcribing my comments, but nothing that changes the basic message.

Darol Dickinson Comments:

DD: My name is Darol Dickinson. I am from Ohio. I had the privilege of driving 7 hours over here yesterday, so I could get my precious 3 minutes in. I thank you for that. Then one kind person that I've never met before today relinquished his 3 minutes to me, so I hope you'll put that 6 minutes on the clock, please. I had an email from John Carter, the president of the Australian Cattlemen's Association, realizing that I would be at this meeting, and he said, "Fight NAIS." We've had NLIS in Australia now--mandatory. It's a nasty word. They've had that in Australia. It's killing them. The book work, the compliance, fees, the fines, the penalties are driving them crazy. He says, "Fight NAIS with your life. Don't let the government get it started. They started it in Australia. It's just cost them a fortune. Land has dropped in prices. The big ranches have dropped. They're trying to sell. They cannot fight the government. It's killing them down there. That's a word from John Carter who's right in the middle of it in a country that can't stop it. Their government will not relinquish it.

At this time the United States livestock is the most disease free in the world, the safest food. The current system has and will safely serve the nation. It is not outdated as some have said. U.S. herd health is the professional example to the world. Each livestock owner maintains their own herd health. Today, 47 states do not have a recorded case of any reportable livestock disease. This is the lowest disease of U.S. record. If USDA will direct their concerns to foreign imports, future unknown disease will be even less, contrary to what briefings have indicated.

The largest owner of meat animals in the states are the states and the U.S. government--their wild game herds. The number of these large animals is more than doubled the number of domestic beef cattle. These animals roam freely over the United States and three other countries without regard to numbering, vaccinations or disease. Those three countries are Mexico, Canada; and I checked with the Alaskan Department of Wildlife, and they say they have animal migration to and from Russia. So the United States government does not intend to number their herd. We landowners feed their herd. So while the U.S. wants mandatory NAIS for the private sector, they have no regard for policing their own disease; who, in fact, are the major transmitters of animal disease in the United States? Did you know there were 200 people last year killed in car wrecks from deer on the highway? That's 200 deaths if we're worried about people's lives, and that's the government herd that's doing that. Okay? Are you with me?

The USDA has briefed elected leaders with flawed data. Leaders have been told there are 1.4 million livestock farms in the USA and over a third enrolled in NAIS. The correct number of farms is over 3.9 million. They've omitted certain segments that they don't want to count. They will require these segments to sign up for NAIS if it's mandatory, but there is, according to their own census, 499,880 farms that sold under a thousand dollars worth of livestock last years, so those were omitted. The horse population-- (interruption..........)

AR: Sir, can you wrap up, please?

DD: I've got 6 minutes.

AR: No, sir, there's no ceding of time.

DD: I've been yielded another 3 minutes.

FS: No, it's not fair to everybody else. You only get 3. It's not fair to everyone else. Everyone else is waiting for their turn as well.

DD: Yes it is fair. I have 3 minutes and this gentleman yielded his 3 minutes to me. You do it in Congress all the time!

AR: That's fine. It was my fault. My directions weren't clear. I'll let him finish. I apologize for the confusion, but from this point forward, there's no ceding time. It's 3 minutes per person.

DD: Thank you very much, ma'am. Please reset your clock to reflect the interruption time.

Instead of the one-third enrollment that we're told about, there's 1.96 million horse owners in the United States that were not counted. So we believe instead of 1/3 of the enrollment already in NAIS, there's only less than 10 percent enrolled if you look at the full picture.

The USDA has falsely told cattle producers that beef export sales is the key to profitable cattle business. This is not correct. Last year the U.S. exported $2.1 billion worth of cattle. We imported $4.8 billion. We are a net import nation. We don't need to export anything. We don't need to apply for any kind of U.N. status to help us export. If we never export another pound of beef, it will not cost anybody in this room a penny. Okay?

For several dozen years nearly 2000 food producing ranches are going out of business per month. NAIS, if it happens, there will be more than 2000 people going out of business per month. I'm a little nervous on this because I feel this involves my farm, my sons, my daughter, my grandchildren; and I don't believe we'll be able to survive NAIS and the cost of it, so forgive me if I'm a little emotional, okay?

Data indicates that the average bovine in normal course of commerce has 8 owners during their earthly existence. NAIS would require a computer entry for each movement or transfer. Within 3 years, NAIS computer entries would more than equal the census of the earth's human population, and every farmer and livestock owner will have to pay for all costs. That is the biggest numbering system that's ever been devised for taxpayers to pay in the history of the world.

Over 3 million livestock producers are refusing to surrender to NAIS property enrollment. The reason is--livestock people are receiving deceptive answers and do not trust USDA. They're scared of USDA and their ever-changing protocol and all the questions that are being asked that cannot be answered. That's the reason--they can't be answered because they haven't made all the rules yet.

So I feel kind of like the old herd sire that was going down the alley, and they asked him just before he got to the... squeeze chute; "How would you prefer your castration? Would you like it with a knife, a burdizzo or a Callicrate band?" So the answer, like all other herd sires is, "None of the above."

AR: Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to wrap up, please.

DD: Okay. I only have one objection to NAIS. In all fairness, it's the word "mandatory." Everything else is okay--mandatory is the killer. So one piece of advice. If a government program isn't worth doing, it isn't worth doing well. Thank you.

NAIS ~~ over estimated, over promised, over budget, unnecessary, unneeded and unwanted.

Brad Headtel

The NAIS is a years-old concept that has outlived its time and fails to recognize that economic instability is our greatest national hazard, not, if all the animals have a government number.

Mary--Fireworks Farm, CA.

NAIS is not a direct ban on meat or chicken or goat meat or ... but a slow, complex legal threat entailing loss of more and more control and then of isolated bankruptcy or of just giving up farming or ranching completely.

Linn Cohen-Cole, 2008

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State
(Source: New York Times, Oct. 28, 1973)

Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

Brad Headtel-------On Bruce (USDA) Knight's pandemic projections
of national livestock catastrophic die-offs.

Bureaucracy never sleeps.

Neil Young

Makes ranchers paw the dirt----like a bull looking forward to the virtues of castration.

on NAIS-------Brad Headtel

Only Jesus loves the stupid. As He looks closer toward the DC Beltway------it's an ever increasing stretch.

Brad Headtel

You are known by the low morals of the bureaucrats you tolerate.

Brad Headtel

Phony science begets phony public policy.

Walter Williams

NAIS~~~~ Mother of all unnecessary federal job creation schemes.

Brad Headtel

The issue is not the issue. Who decides the issue is the issue. If you decide the issue you are a free man. If a politician decides the issue you can un-elect him, but if a bureaucrat decides the issues you are his pawn and practically without recourse.

Harold Hockstatter

It is sad that here in the United States of America we must fight our government to protect our own rights, but fight I will.

 Jerry Fennell--From "Shattered Dreams"

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

On NAIS -- H.L. Mencken

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it..

Adolf Hitler

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

Robert Heinlein

If a government program is not worth doing at all,   it is not worth doing well.

...on NAIS - Brad Headtel

Communism ~~ the government owns the means and method of production.  In fascism the government controls the means and method of production.

We're not happy until you're not happy...

USDA official on the Westland/Hallmark Meat recall of Feb. 17, 08

NAIS is one of those issues that everyone wishes never became an issue. It is a genie that will not go back in the bottle.

Troy Marshall, Seed Stock Digest, 1/7/08

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

on the NAIS program..... - Frederick Douglass

We're out here branding cattle, worrying about our best horse going blind, when all of a sudden the USDA is working at mach speed filling our saddle bags with heavy NAIS rocks.

Michelle Reid

....NAIS matters less than flea sweat.
....producer interest in NAIS is less robust than a paper pig in a barbeque pit.

Wes Ishmael, Contributing editor,
BEEF Magazine, Dec. 2007

I work day and night to prevent NAIS!

This is the first time in my life I have had the opportunity to save billions of dollars of wasted government tax for my fellow livestock producers all over the nation. As it was said about Queen Esther of old, from the great palace of Shushan, '...who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this.?'

I feel the NAIS program, as planned, will embezzle from 10 to 60% of the profit from every livestock producer, and that is not an acceptable price to pay for a naive USDA concern about future unknown or previously eradicated diseases.
Every consumer or livestock owner should spend full time to prevent the enforcement of this cost to our nation.

Darol Dickinson

NAIS will not be mandatory under my tenure. I repeat will not!

Mike Johanns on mandatory National Animal Identification Surrender.
Sec. of Agriculture Mike Johanns quit the job two months later.

NAIS will put Livestock owners under closer surveillance than terrorists, illegals aliens, drug dealers, and convicted sex offenders/child molesters. Currently, only convicted sex offenders/child molesters have to register their premises.

BSE, bovine spongiform encephalopathy takes five to seven years to develop. It's not actually a disease that you have to rush to trace. You can take about all the time you need. What you want to do is prevent it in the first place.

Reno, Nev. --- 11/29/07 Jay Truitt          
NCBA VP for governmental affairs,
on the USDA proposed 48 hour
emergency disease trace back.

Most of the stuff people worry about ain't never gunna happen.

Will Rogers . . . . on NAIS

No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.

Mark Twain

What this country needs are more unemployed bureaucrats.

Edward Langley

Each time we give up information about ourselves to the government, we give up some of our freedom. The more the government or any institution knows about us, the more power it has over us. When the government knows all of our private information, we stand naked before official power; stripped of our privacy, we lose our rights and privileges. The Bill of Rights then becomes just so many words.

Senator Sam Ervin, June 1974.

The USDA is a run away agency out of control, with total disregard for U.S. citizens, yet full regard for other countries and free trade at all costs.

Dr. Max Thornsberry, President R-CALF USA

NAIS . . . a program that somewhat resembles an expensive plan to use baseball bats to kill mosquitoes . . . when we haven't found the mosquito---and the plan was proposed by a bat manufacturer.

NAIS . . . when freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a fake front for the urge to rule.

H.L. Menchen

Is the USDA run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it?

NAIS is like a fat man in a swim suit - you may not appreciate what you see, but what isn't revealed is even more fearful.

NAIS Employee -- Never argue with a person whose job depends on not being convinced.

Remember - A major animal disease outbreak to a State Veterinarian is like a multi-car wreck to an auto body shop.

NAIS is the very model of how an unresponsive Executive Branch agency can cooperate with a globalist industrial agriculture and a technocratic corporate elite to force an undesired program upon an unwilling populace.

Mary Zanoni

NAIS press releases from USDA could present caviar in such a light we want to run from it like a falling meteorite.

Many associations embrace the NAIS because their paid leadership does so, regardless of what their members truly want.

Marida Favia delCore Borromeo

On NAIS - If USDA comes up with a stupid idea -- If Congress votes to fund it -- If 296,000,000 taxpayers write the check -- I'm sorry, it's still a stupid idea.

NAIS is a disease masquerading as its own cure.

NAIS is the result of looking for trouble, not finding it anywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying costly incorrect remedies.

As the government is doing wrong to us, like with NAIS, you gotta know they are doing wrong to people all over the world, right?  Why do all these countries hate the USA?

Linn Cohen-Cole

Once government gets its hands on new power, it is never relinquished.

Henry  Lamb ~~~ Sovereignty International