Post by Joann on Jan 25, 2006 7:00:50 GMT -5
NAIS commentary jsr
NAIS regulations were contrived within USDA without input from small farmers or animal owners such as those on this forum. USDA’s top management positions are filled in a revolving door policy by giant agricultural interests. The regulations exist as a response to the fears of urban dwellers and foreign meat customers to disease outbreaks among animals. It is hoped that the existence of a huge new bureaucracy able to track all animals will soothe these fears. Perhaps it will. It will not, however, do anything to prevent disease. The causes of food borne disease are well understood. Overwhelmingly, outbreaks derive from messy practices in the highly centralized meat and poultry industry. Forty-eight hour trackback may serve to assign some blame and result in fines but is powerless to prevent illness.
If a genuine pragmatic desire to prevent food borne illness formed any part of the motivation for these regulations, then small producers would not only be exempt from these onerous regulations, but local production would be actively encouraged. We all know that in fact the very opposite is the case, beginning with punitive taxation and many punitive regulations already in existence which deprive small producers of a level playing field. I need hardly point out to readers of this forum that local food production is inherently safer not only because local producers have a personal relationship with their customers but because should an outbreak occur it does not go far.
NAIS regulations, by handicapping small local producers even beyond what is to be required of mass producers, clearly is intended to discourage us. In addition, and far worse in my view, the existence of this bureaucracy will facilitate the obtaining of mass warrants to destroy animals. We saw this recently in England with the mass destruction of perfectly healthy animals, often much loved heirloom animals, in order to satisfy the fears of the British meat industry of Foot and Mouth disease, a disease which does not even affect people. Examples of the arrogant misuse of power by those who have it are not far to seek. I find it extremely naïve to suppose that small producers will not soon suffer grievously under NAIS. I very much doubt that the huge operations will suffer in the least.
I suspect that NAIS is deliberately festooned with frivolous regulations in full expectation that the more nervous among us will become a little hysterical. We will then be treated to announcements of compromises to protect guinea pig owners while the crushing body of the regulations remains intact. Time may reveal that hysteria was the appropriate response to NAIS.
A quote, Biblical or otherwise, is by definitions out of context, but may nonetheless be highly apropos. Here are two I like. The first is from The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith and was written in 1812.
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.
princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made:
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
When once destroy’d, can never be supplied.
Here is William Butler Yeats’ take on social upheaval written about 1925 and quoted here in its entirety.
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Life went on after Goldsmith and after Yeats and most likely will continue for a while longer. It has been better for us because these poets spoke up and some people listened.
Let’s not be like that famous frog that cooked because his bath heated up one boiling drop at a time.
Joann