From: <mailto:[email protected]>[email protected] To: <mailto:[email protected]>[email protected] Sent: 3/16/2009 9:59:05 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time Subj: Urgent: Stop Corporate Fascists From Taking Over Our Food Supply
Please note: We told you about this issue last week and many of you responded. But we still need your comments with the USDA by the end of the day, Monday, March 16, to stop the incredibly destructive corporate scheme described below. Congress is already trying to stack the deck so only lobbyists have a meaningful voice in this debate. We can stop them if you speak out now. Radio Chip Animal Identification Would Do ALL Harm To Our Real Food Safety, And No Good It would be too easy to blame the recent peanut panic on one criminal corporation owner, who KNOWINGLY shipped Salmonella contaminated product. But before that it was millions of pounds of ground beef, and before that tomatoes all over the country, and on and on. And when you ask where is all this horrible filth coming from, with a over a million cases of Salmonella in the U.S. alone every year, the answer is self-evident. It's the huge factory farms that overflow with seas of untreated animal waste, that then spill into our food supply, including through our agricultural plant crop fields. We have a lot of work to do to clean up this giant mess, but the first thing we have to do is STOP a lunatic boondoggle being pushed by these same corporate interests, to force radio computer chip implanting of literally every farm animal in the country, EXCEPT on their own factory farms. It is absolutely nothing but a further attempt to drive small family farms out of business, who in fact are our safest source of reliably clean food now. The proposed National Animal Identification System (NAIS) would force even the smallest healthy farms to buy expensive new computer tracking equipment, and potentially would subject them to gestapo-like tactics by the USDA if they are in even slight technical non-compliance. And all this just to fatten the pockets of the RFID chip manufacturers, and to make it LOOK like something is being done to make our food safer. The special one click action page below will send your personal message to all your members Congress and also directly to the U.S. Department of Agriculture who is trying to rush this thing through without adequate scrutiny. Stop NAIS Action Page: <http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum942.php>http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum942.php This action is especially urgent because the U.S. House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry is holding a hearing on NAIS implementation on March 11, and many farm activists fear the plan is to push it out for a full vote in Congress faster than a greased pig, before we the people have a meaningful chance to speak out. You may not have a House member on that particular subcommittee, but you can pressure your own House member to tell they colleagues on it that there is massive constituent pressure against NAIS. For the especially mobilized on the action page above there is a link to the phone numbers for those on the subcommittee, because they are in fact your representative as an American citizen if they sit on it. Below are some more extensive truth points you can select from in drafting your comments or on the phone, again linked to from the action page above. NAIS was designed by NIAA (the National Institute of Animal Agriculture), a corporate consortium consisting of Monsanto, industrial meat producers such as Cargill and Tyson, and surveillance companies such Viatrace, AgInfoLink, and Digital Angel. The NAIS scheme fits agribusiness, biotech, and surveillance companies to a T: 1) They are already computerized, and they engineered a corporate loophole: If an entity owns a vertically integrated, birth-to-death factory system with thousands of animals (as the Cargills and Tysons do), it does not have to tag and track each one but instead a herd is given a single lot number. 2). NAIS will only be burdensome and costly (fees, tags, computer equipment, time) to small farmers which helps push them out of business, thus leaving more market to giant agribusiness. 3) Agribusiness wants to reassure export customers that the US meat industry is finally cleaning up its widespread contamination. NAIS would give that appearance ... without incurring the cost of a real cleanup. 4) NAIS will allow total control over the competition: Owners of even a single chicken would be required to register private information, the Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates of their 'premise' and if any animal leaves its 'premise', the owner will be required to obtain an ID number for it and have the animal microchipped. All information, including 24 hour GPS surveillance would be fed into a vast corporate data bank, allowing for ease of false slaughter to hide true problems or to substitute biotech's genetically engineered animals. 5) NAIS may allow plundering of farmers through required DNA samples: DNA samples would be invaluable to Monsanto and biotech corporations genetically engineering animals. Farmers who raise heritage breeds would have no say in how their distinct DNA would be used and to the sole profit of biotech companies. 6) The advantage for the surveillance companies is obvious: Compulsory tagging of 6 million sheep, 7 million horses, 63 million hogs, 97 million cows, 260 million turkeys, 300 million laying hens, 9 billion chickens, and untold numbers of bison, alpaca, quail, and other animals -- and new animals being born, means a massive self-perpetuating market. Please take action now to stop this insanity. Our health and our lives depend on it. Stop NAIS Action Page: <http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum942.php>http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum942.php The health claims for NAIS are a sham though fear of disease is used to advance it. NAIS does not touch the contaminated source of E.coli, salmonella, listeria, mad cow, and common meat-borne diseases - the inherently unhealthy practices (mass crowding, growth stimulants, feeding regimens, rushed assembly lines, poor sanitation, etc.) of industrial-scale meat operations. Upton Sinclair's "Jungle" all over again. NAIS will do nothing to stop these practices. Moreover, tracking ends at the time of slaughter, yet it's from slaughter onward that most spoilage occurs. But NAIS does not trace any contamination after slaughter. The self-serving Agribusiness NAIS plan distracts from their contaminatory practices, while targeting hundreds of thousands of small farms, homesteaders, organic producers, hobbyists ... and maybe even you. NAIS's purpose is to advance corporate monopoly over all food in the US. And with it, they have laid the ground work. Kissinger said if you control food, you can control people. This immense corporate plan to control of our food supply and eliminate our independent farmers is, at it heart, the most severe threat possible to our democracy itself. Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible. If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at <http://www.peaceteam.net/in.htm>http://www.peaceteam.net/in.htm Or if you want to cease receiving our messages, just use the function at <http://www.peaceteam.net/out.htm>http://www.peaceteam.net/out.htm usalone303b:248635 Feeling the pinch at the grocery store? <http://food.aol.com/frugal-feasts?ncid=emlcntusfood00000002>Make meals for under $10. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to Mark Crispin Miller's "News From Underground" newsgroup. 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