Terrorist Chickens

Tuesday, February 7. 2006

The Real Deal: Tagging Terrorist Chickens

Agribusiness lobbied the USDA to create a system to protect them from legal liability if an epidemic does break out. More, NAIS would protect agribusiness market share, forestalling a public revulsion against their product by â€œconfirmingâ€ that only a few animals were sick, rather than not thousands. NAIS enables huge agribusiness conglomerates that concentrate thousands of animals (and so concentrate the chance for spreading diseases) to point their finger at someone else.

Hereâ€™s the scenario:

# People in Sheboygan get sick from something they ate.

# Itâ€™s determined the meat came from a local fast food joint.

# That fast food joint gets its meat from ABC cow factory.

# ABC cow factory buys cows from XYZ feedlots.

# Those feedlots had cows numbered 1q10 through 1q500 in their possession and those cows came from 15 small farms in suburban Tempe.

# Goodbye 15 small farms in suburban Tempe.

# Hello scapegoat for fast food joint, slaughterhouse, and feedlots.

Somebody besides me gets it. NAIS is the USDA/meat packing companies way of doing away with the small farmer and rancher. I might be overstating it a little but that's the way I see it. The author of this opinion piece has insightful vision to see it too.

I do have a serious question though. How does a person get people to care about this issue and do something about it? A few voices yelling and screaming about the issue and people just label you as a crackpot. Whether I'm cracked or not I don't know but I won't silence myself. But how do i effectively communicate my message? I'll think of something and keep working on it.

Remember, an ID number never stopped a disease.

Posted by Sarpy Sam in Opinion Piece at 02:18 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: food security, nais, opinion, usda

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It is all too true that those who think about these issues and speak up on them are soon labeled as crackpots. I went to the final meeting that dissolved our little marketing cooperative today. My husband and I struggled against this to no avail. I got real sick of the telephone I will tell you.
When I asked a question at that meeting, the manager of the big company that is taking us over knew me by my first name. There are hundreds of producers involved in this deal. We have never been introduced and he had no reason to know me, yet he called me by name. I almost laughed at that, knowing for sure that I have been labeled as a trouble maker for speaking out. I would be flattered if it wasn't so sad.

#1 Marianne (Homepage) on 2006-02-13 16:55 (Reply)

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